The following is a guest submission to us from Heather Johnson - more on her in her byline below. I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting her answer to how to emphasize your soft skills, and I’ll happily add my two cents on the subject.

And to that point, next week we’ll do a post on a bit of required reading, for learning how to toot your own horn without sounding obnoxiously self-congratulatory.–Allen

How to Emphasize Your Soft Skills on a Resume

Although technical skills and education are very important to hiring managers, so are your soft skills. After all, some skills can be taught on the job, such as proficiency with a certain computer program. A soft skill like integrity, however, is something that cannot be learned on the job. Below are some soft skills that many hiring managers are looking for:

Ability to work in a team
Organizational skills
Leadership skills
Self-motivation
Honesty
Problem solving skills
Communication skills
Networking skills
Multi-tasking skills

When you are describing the duties of your past positions, always emphasize the soft skills that you utilized or even acquired on the job. You can easily fit key phrases like the ones above into your many career achievements. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to mention some soft skills when writing your cover letter.

Many hiring managers are now realizing how vital soft skills really are. Attributes like leadership skills and the ability to problem solve are invaluable for any position. For that reason, it could be in your benefit to tweak your resume accordingly. Should you be shortlisted for a position, your soft skills could be that little nudge that pushes you ahead of the others.

This post was contributed by Heather Johnson, who is an industry critic on the subject of how to become an obstetrician. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.