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Are soft skills characteristics of a personality?
Are soft skills characteristics of a personality?

Unclear, abstract characteristics

Andre Hafner avatar
Written by Andre Hafner
Updated over a month ago

No, soft skills are not characteristics of a personality.

Personality characteristics (e.g. in the Big Five) describe stable, relatively unchanging characteristics of a person that shape their behavior, thoughts and feelings across different situations. The use of personality characteristics brings with it significant disadvantages:

  • low observability

  • subjectivity of self-reporting

  • context dependency

  • lack of validity and reliability

  • inflexibility of characteristics

In contrast to action skills

Personality characteristics change only slowly and therefore offer little scope for targeted development - in contrast to action skills, which can be trained. Action skills are concrete, learned competencies and skills that enable a person to successfully complete specific tasks or challenges. The focus on action skills ensures more objective decisions and promotes the long-term fit between candidates and companies.

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