Job seeking and Employability support for Migrants // Toolkit for trainers
Soft skills
Soft skills
Soft skills are usually defined in contrast to job-specific skills that constitute the core occupational requirements of a job. A skill is the "ability to apply knowledge and use know-how to complete tasks and solve problems".
- See the Soft skills definition from Wikipedia.
- The Cedefop defines them as "Skills that are cross-cutting across jobs and sectors (see Sector-specific jobs) and relate to personal competences (confidence, discipline, self-management) and social competences (teamwork, communication, emotional intelligence)"
Some are close to and could be included in "transversal skills", "personal and transversal competences" or in the 8 key competences for lifelong learning defined by the Recommendation 2006/962/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006.
Methods to develop soft skills
Mentoring Circles™
Inova Consultancy has developed a methodology for Mentoring Circles™ in 2001 to facilitate soft skills development. It is aimed at increasing and nurturing self-confidence, preventing isolation and connecting people with peers. They are usually groups of 4 to 5 people meeting with a mentor/facilitator to learn from each other over a set period of 2- 3 months. Circles bring together action learning theory, coaching and mentoring principles to support and build confidence and self-efficacy in learners.
- Mentoring Circles™ online: Find out more about Circles in the UK.
- To find out more about how Mentoring Circles have been used to support potential women entrepreneurs, visit the female project
- Presentation by Intercambio
To find out more about mentoring:
- To know more about Mentoring and its various models, visit: Developing Possibilities and Potentials - A Mentorship Journey by Pamela Adams
- A Guide to Mentoring Circles elaborated by Abbott in 2008
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A research article (there are a few) about the use of Mentoring Circles to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nursing students
- The mentor guide related to the above mentioned research.
- A good practice guide on mentoring (produced by an Equal project to facilitate the employment of women in non-traditional areas)
Global approaches
- Guidelines to develop personal and transversal skills. This is the result of the Yes-Me progress project that included a research phase to determine the personal and transversal skills required by companies, a benchmarking phase to select appropriate tools for developing the targeted skills and an experimentation and validation phase with young unemployed people.
Tools and methods used to develop soft skills
- An online evaluation of the 8 key competences (unfortunately in French only)
Key skills for the future
Seven key skills by Valérie Alibert after Stéphane Cannone
We leave this section open to your suggestions. Contact us to contribute other tools and methods and to share best practice.
JEM is a Leonardo da Vinci learning partnership project on the period 2013-2015 co-financed by
the European Commission under the lifelong learning programme.
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This web site reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.