The origins of soft skills trace back to the US Army, who, in the 1960s and 1970s was the first to identify and develop the concept of soft skills.
In 1968, the US Continental Army Command (CONARC) officially introduced its “Systems Engineering of Training” concerning “job-related skills involving actions affecting primarily people and paper”.
The term “soft skills” appeared for the first time in a 1972 army training manual. That same year, a CONARC conference on soft skills was held. Speaking at this conference, Dr. Paul Whitmore, defined soft skills as “important job-related skills that involve little or no interaction with machines and whose application on the job is quite generalized”.
The notion of “soft skills” was gradually adopted thereafter beyond the realm of the military and today is widespread in society. Today, 50 years after they were identified, soft skills are very much a “hot topic” in almost every walk of life. The question begs itself: why have soft skills become so important?
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