Hard Skills: The Use Of Soft Skills In Accounting

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In all types of organisations, different approaches are used in order to deal with individuals and the situations. An approach that is popularly used throughout the financial industry is the use of technical skills also known as hard skills. A technical approach are skills that are applied from the abilities and knowledge to complete specific tasks. Hard skills are specific skills such as maths and computing, that are commonly taught through education or training in the workplace to complete specific task (Wikle and Fagin, 2014). It is vital for all accounting student to learn these technical skills throughout their education to prepare themselves to enter the workforce; such as computing, mathematical skills, data analysis to be able to apply …show more content…

Marcel M. Robles has identified through research the top ten soft skills, some of which are communication, flexibility and professionalism (Robles, 2012, Page. 455). The research undertaken by M. Robles highlights the importance of soft skill attributes by business executives, in which they categorised each skill from the list as for example, 100% of the 57 candidates suggested that integrity and communication are very significant skills for employees to have so they can easily integrate with the existing workforce as this will enable them to swiftly be productive and play a key role for the company (Robles, 2012). Hence, therefore accounting students must learn soft skills through early stages of their education as employers will try their best to remove any delays, caused by new employees adjusting to the company, which will have a knock-on effect with company to complete their common objective. Not only does M. Robles highlights the importance of soft skills through his research but so does the Economic Times. As they have also reported that most of their candidates felt that soft skills were important when considering hiring new employees however, majority of those candidates they faced difficulty when locating employees with the appropriate soft skills (Ravindranath, 2016). This suggest that in the current environment for accountants has placed a great …show more content…

However, they should not limit themselves as the financial market is very saturated with accountants, making it much harder for accounting students to obtain graduate jobs. Additionally, accounting students will be classed as a risk to employer’s as they lack experience and limited in knowledge and capabilities. Therefore, they will need to diversify themselves to have a higher chance of obtaining a graduate job. To do this, they should learn and develop their soft skills as employers look out for individuals will excellent people orientated skills as they can reduce any cost attached to appropriately training the employees and they will know that you can meet customer/client satisfaction through how you communicate and present yourself. The competency model is a model that highlights, develops and promotes skills that can produce employees with high standards of effectiveness and efficiency, hence why it is used by many employers. Therefore, when this model was analysed the researchers concluded that soft skills can easily highlight exceptional leaders and managers when soft skills are effectively incorporated; additionally, they have shown that soft skill has a positive impact on their performance (De Villiers, 2010). Ultimately, it will be highly beneficial for the accounting students to be taught soft skills as employers

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