Soft skills are personal, social and methodological competencies that are not tied to a specific field. Classic examples are communication, teamwork, conflict handling, empathy, self-organisation, resilience, critical thinking and willingness to learn. They complement hard skills and shape collaboration in teams.
In hiring, soft skills are gaining weight. While hard skills can be evidenced through certificates and experience, soft skills must be illustrated concretely in the CV, cover letter and interview – ideally through short examples ("In my last project, I ..."). Plain self-descriptions like "team player" without evidence convince no one.
In public service, education and the social sector, soft skills often matter most because much of the work is not standardisable and interpersonal quality defines outcomes. They are also central to the question of which jobs are AI-safe: complex empathy and situational judgement remain hard to automate.
Lunigi weights candidate profiles in part by indicators of soft skills, such as free-text descriptions and mentioned achievements.