Student Resources:
Soft Skills for the Academic Job Market
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
The academic job market in the U.S. is extremely competitive. To land a job, a candidate must possess both hard and soft skills. Hard skills include things like the ability to given compelling presentation, run and interpret regression models, and the capacity to publish. Soft skills are rather intangible and captures anything from affability, to relating well with diverse people, and to being caring. Employers are keen about hard skills much as they are about soft skills. Unfortunately, doctoral programs tend to overemphasize hard skills in their training, paying too little attention to soft skills. The essence of this session is to help bridge the gap by answering questions such as: What are soft skills and why are they important in academia? What soft skills are relevant to the academic job market? How does a candidate identify and develop the relevant soft skills? And how can they blend soft and hard skills to give them a competitive advantage on the job market?
Moderator: Alex Osei-Kojo, University of Colorado, Denver
