Soft Skills Training – Reality Check:

Whether we’™re talking in a team meeting or presenting in front of an audience, we all have to speak in public from time to time. From sales pitches to internal strategy discussions, good presentation and public speaking skills are key to doing well in today’™s volatile business world. Having great content is important but that’™s just not enough. It must be packaged and presented in an engaging way to achieve the end objective. This is where soft skills training comes in handy. With thorough preparation and practice, you can overcome your nervousness and perform exceptionally well for sure.

Soft Skills; An Exceptional Skillset:

Soft skills ‘” a blend of interpersonal savvy, communication skills, and social intelligence ‘” are in high demand by employers today, according to Burning Glass Technologies. Even though a lot of people agree that soft skills are important, the word ‘œsoft’when compared to ‘œhard’suggests of them being significantly easier. James Winebrake, PhD, and Dean of Rochester Institute of Technology’™s College of Liberal Arts once said,

These so-called ‘˜soft skills’™ in fact are some of the most challenging skills that people need to master. These skills allow people to work effectively in teams, to communicate well, and to think in ways that lead to innovation and creativity.

Soft skills are basically job skills that, rarely get the attention that they truly deserve, but that does not mean that they are not valuable in the workplace. More and more organizations recognize how soft skills in the workplace differentiate great employees (and businesses) from good ones. Author Peggy Klaus summed it up well when she said:

‘œsoft skills get little respect, but they will make or break your career.’

Hard v/s Soft Skills:

Commonly known as people skills, Soft Skills mainly enables you to get along, build a rapport and work harmoniously with other people. These skills are a combination of communication skills, personality development, social skills, emotional intelligence and, of course, people skills. Soft skills training is possible, but it would not be as specific as hard skills training, where you can measure and define the skills. Hard skills are measurable, tangible and result oriented, they can be quantified. These can be equated to learning mathematics or writing or learning the concepts to get better at them. On the other hand, soft skills ‘“ having a flexible attitude, being empathetic, making small talk, confident conversations ‘“ aren’™t straightforward. It may look like Hard Skills make more sense and help you land a job, but Soft Skills are important in making the first impression and for constant career growth. Here we’ve rounded up a list of the soft skills most critical to building a successful career – and how you can brush them up at EduPrisitne.

Hard Skills & Corresponding Soft Skills:

At EduPristine we offer a number of courses. While most of our soft skill modules are the same across each course, we have identified a few specific soft skill modules are that are tailor-made to suit the individual course.

Domain	Soft Skill Modules
Accounts	Introduction to Business Communication Interpersonal Communication Time and Negotiation Management Presentation Skills Number Focus Email and Virtual Communication Mock Interviews and CV Writing
Finance	Introduction to Business Communication Interpersonal Communication Presentation Skills Number Focus Email and Virtual Communication Mock Interviews and CV Writing
Analytics	Introduction to Business Communication Interpersonal Communication Presentation Skills and Executive Presence Number Focus Time and Negotiation Management Email and Virtual Communication Mock Interviews and CV Writing
Marketing	Introduction to Business Communication Interpersonal Communication Presentation Skills and Executive Presence Email and Virtual Communication Mock Interviews and CV Writing
Healthcare	Introduction to Business Communication Interpersonal Communication Presentation Skills Email and Virtual Communication Mock Interviews and CV Writing

What do we offer in our Soft Skills Training?

At EduPristine, we have been teaching working professionals and aspiring students by delivering highly focused courses at Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai for a long time now and all our aspirants are able to communicate effectively and efficiently with others around them. Our soft skills training are normally conducted for a duration of 12 to 15 hours, wherein we cover topics that relate to; Inter and Intrapersonal Communication, Presentation Skills, Leadership Skills, Email Communication, Decision Making, Assertiveness, Problem-Solving, Time Management, Effective Interview Skills, and CV Writing.

• Inter and Intrapersonal Communication; This gives the student a richer awareness of his or her own intrapersonal and interpersonal communicative behavior.
• Presentation Skills; These sessions cover topics as analyzing audiences, organizing information and using body language effectively.
• Leadership Skills; Discover a new approach to leadership which is based on the capacity to build quality and trustworthy relationships. Hear and watch people who have embarked on the same journey as you and reflect on your inspiration to lead.
• Email and Virtual Communication; Learn to draft effective business emails in English. This session is unique because each module will provide tips on writing more professional emails as well as lessons to improve your overall English writing skills.
• Decision Making, Problem-Solving and Assertiveness; Learn the art of assertive communication and its value in the workplace. Learn to review behavior that builds credibility along with techniques for dealing with anxiety and avoidance
• Time Management; Explore time management tips that focus on mental and physical productivity and help you stay organized, increase efficiency & clarity, so you become more focused in both professional and personal life.
• Effective Interview Skills; Learn how to prepare for an interview with activities like mirroring. Get tips on what to do before and interview, how to hone your body language, practice the most commonly asked questions and much more.

CV Writing; Impress recruiters with a professionally written curriculum vitae and stand out as the right candidate in the market.

Expected Outcome; The Value of Soft Skills:

Since our students are looking to establish a successful professional career, here are the several ways in which soft skills are important for them to enjoy an edge over others who are not in sync with these ever-changing ‘œpeople skills’.

• Business Writing Skills; Would help prospective students to communicate their business objectives in a reasonable manner
• Change Management; This training would be highly helpful in mitigating the resistance against potential change in the business world.
• Coaching For Performance; Enhancing one’™s ability for better accomplishment of their job responsibilities.
• Leadership; Helping emerging entrepreneurs or employee, identify skills that are required for leading one another.
• Negotiation Skills; Enhancing one’™s ability to manage diversity by effectively managing conflicts.
• Powerful Presentations; Helping individuals groom their public speaking traits for better dealing with their business clients and co-workers.

Our Pedagogy:

Our programs are aimed to identify the areas of concerns in the communication of candidates and coach them in their weak areas to improve their communication. Since communication is so an important part of everyone’™s life, the methodology that we use in all our popular soft skills training lectures is experiential learning (mock interviews) as the practice in these sessions enables students to use those learnings and techniques in future. We combine different methodologies during different sessions of our soft skills lectures so that the learners are able to understand the concepts behind various communication techniques and their real-life applications and importance. Our soft skill training sessions are conducted using PowerPoint presentations, flipcharts, worksheets, visual, and audio aids. We lay emphasis on recent case studies that relate to skill set development that is available on LinkedIn and Google. We make sure to play a few videos that highlight the importance of body language, effective communication, personality development, and confidence. We also devote enough time for conducting mock interview sessions and CV writing.

A Personalized Approach:

We begin our sessions by conducting SWOT Analysis, where we ask students to identify their strengths and shortcomings in terms of communication. One to one mentoring is conducted in this session wherein the faculty and the student can mutually identify areas of improvement. During these sessions, we lay emphasis not only on communication but effective English speaking and Grammar. We also have our students introducing themselves in front of the class, this helps break the ice and develop some amount of public speaking confidence. These sessions eventually move on to presentation skills, wherein the importance of effective corporate presentation techniques is discussed. Effective presentation requires effective communication and leadership skills. For which we try emphasizing the role of an effective leader.  Character traits, personality and behavior are a few parameters that are discussed. At EduPrisitne, we believe in the holistic development of our pupils. While we concentrate on verbal communication we also make it a point to cover email and virtual communication. The art of writing an effective email. How to draft; cover letters, email subject lines, email contents are all covered in these sessions. Modules usually differ as per the program, hence between email and the mock interview sessions, we conduct program-based modules that deal with decision making, problem-solving, assertiveness, and time management. Our USP is the mock interview session, that covers more than 60 generic questions. Several questions such as; Tell me something about yourself, Why should we hire you? What are your strengths and shortcomings? What are your salary expectations? etc. are all discussed in these sessions. We divide the class into two, one the interviewer and the others being the interviewees.  Our sessions conclude with CV writing. We make it a point to personally correct each CV. We share fresh formats and have a detailed explanation point by point regarding the points that need to be covered in the CV. We pay special attention to the fonts, content, layouts, and design of the CV. For a more personalized approach, we email students their revised CVs.

Our Ultimate Aim:

• Helping our students overcome the fear of public speaking and approaching every opportunity with confidence.
• Helping students channelize their thoughts in a compelling manner that leaves the audience awestruck.
• Providing our students with an opportunity to practice delivering speeches in various contexts and on various topics relevant to them.
• Helping students observe and reflect on their presentation style and providing 360-degree personalized feedback.
• Conducting mock interviews using 60 plus generic interview questions and preparing students to face interviews.

Know your faculty:

Dr. Mihir Kalambi (Ph. D; Commerce and Management) Faculty-Business Communications, EduPristine. Currently working as Faculty for Business Communications at EduPrisitne, Dr Mihir Kalambi trains students and corporates on topics relating to Leadership, Communication Skills, Presentation Skills, Emotional Intelligence, Self-Awareness, Team Building, Negotiation Skills and Personality Development. Dr. Mihir is Member at The Society of Innovative Educationalist and Scientific Research Professional, Chennai; Fellow at the Indian Society of Business Management. He is also on the Advisory Council of the International Academic Association of Researchers in Humanities, IT, Engineering & Science and Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Innovative Research in Social Sciences & Humanities. Dr. Kalambi has been invited as Session Chairperson at several National and International Conferences, such as (New York 2016, Thailand 2016, Delhi- 2017, Australia- 2018 and New Zealand 2019) and has presented over 25 research papers & articles at National and International Conferences.