How to Become a
Soft Skills Trainer
If you’re looking for information about becoming a soft skills trainer, you’ve found the right place. We also feature expert tips to jumpstart your soft skill trainer resume and job-specific samples that you can customize to take your career to the next level. Keep reading to learn everything you want to know about a career as a soft skills trainer.
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What Does a Soft Skills Trainer Do?
A soft skills trainer provides targeted training to individuals to help them strengthen their interpersonal skills including speech, body language, problem-solving and social interaction. While many people are brilliant at their jobs, some need to improve their soft skills, which are a key component in successful working relationships. Soft skills trainers support people who struggle with or lack interpersonal communication skills. They achieve this by teaching helpful strategies and providing various role-playing activities that allow the participants to realize their shortcomings and take action to correct them.
Some typical soft skill trainer duties and responsibilities include:
Developing and delivering training programs to employees.
Assessing the weaknesses and strengths of individuals and adjusting training as needed.
Monitoring the effectiveness of training materials.
Performing administrative tasks such as scheduling, coordinating and billing.
How Do You Become a Soft Skills Trainer?
Soft skills trainers are a great asset to organizations because they help develop employees’ career growth by improving their interpersonal skills for success. Let’s break down the steps to becoming a soft skills trainer.
Complete your bachelor’s degree:
Soft skills trainers are expected to have at least a bachelor’s degree in education, communication, business, social sciences and arts. They learn to master teaching methods, and instructional design in business, psychology and communication.
Create a job-winning resume:
Every well-planned soft skills trainer’s job search starts with crafting a high-quality resume highlighting your skills and experience. A resume will make a difference in whether you land the job. For help creating a resume, look at our library of soft skills trainer resume samples.
Once your resume is ready, search for soft skills trainer job opportunities online. As you search for openings, contact people within your professional network, including people you worked with in corporate settings.
When applying for soft skills trainer positions, create a cover letter that expresses your interest in the position and highlights your qualifications and what you can bring to the role. Need some inspiration for your cover letter? Check out our collection of cover letter samples.
Career growth:
Demand for soft skills trainers is developing at a rate that’s about as fast as average for all occupations. The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts a 7% growth for the position through 2024, amounting to 18,900 job openings for soft skills trainers during that period. The projected job openings will be due to the increasing number of companies requiring their employees to take skill development courses to increase their knowledge in the workplace.
If you don’t know where to start, check out our Resume Builder. Our builder uses interactive tools with pre-written, job-specific content to help you tell your professional story. The builder helps you show off your most marketable relevant skills and experience to demonstrate the benefits you offer as an advocate to employers.
Soft Skills Trainer Skills
The ability to teach others, exercise leadership, negotiate and work with people from diverse backgrounds are some of the most critical skills a soft skills trainer will need to be able to do. In addition, an understanding of conflict resolution and the ability to teach strategies related to it are key. Social perceptiveness is also helpful because it will allow the trainer to understand the motivation (or lack thereof) of specific individuals and use the information to encourage the development of interpersonal skills.
Here are the top skills for soft skills trainers:Analytical skills
Decision-making skills
Interpersonal skills
Public speaking skills
Analytical skills
Decision-making skills
Interpersonal skills
Public speaking skills
Insights from a Soft Skills Trainer
In order to get an inside look at how to become a Soft Skills Trainer, we talked to David Jacobson, an experienced employee team-building professional and Founder/Producer of TrivWorks. Here’s what he had to tell us.
What is the common career path for a Soft Skills Trainer?
There is no “common” career path for soft skills trainers; rather, people drawn towards this field have a natural passion/interest in improving workplaces, coaching others to reach their full potential and making the office a better, more enjoyable place.
What should someone consider before becoming a Soft Skills Trainer?
Someone considering a job in this field should clearly answer this question: Why do I want to do this? Did I have a bad experience and want to turn it into something positive? Have I myself overcome my own soft skills shortcomings and want to share that experience with others? Do I not like what I see in the workplace and want to make an impact? These are all questions which one should ask before deciding to enter this field.
What type of person excels in this job?
To be successful as a Soft Skills Trainer, you need to have A) a genuine passion for helping people and for improving the workplace; B) high emotional intelligence, to connect and empathize with an audience/clients; C) excellent listening skills, to fully understand which areas your audience/clients are seeking to improve; and D) an excellent commanding stage presence/ability to convey authority, without being domineering.
What are some of the most important skills for Soft Skills Trainers to have?
Being a trainer of any kind means you must be highly organized, attentive to detail, be able to manage multiple tasks at once and prioritize. For soft skills, it is critical to be strong in public speaking, listening, facilitating and giving/receiving feedback.
What do you find to be the most rewarding aspect of being a Soft Skills Trainer?
By far, the most rewarding aspect is knowing that you are having a positive, lasting impact on an individual or group, which will hopefully improve the workplace, boost morale, drive up sales and make for happier customers!
How Much Do Soft Skills Trainers Get Paid?
Soft Skills Trainers in the United States earn a median hourly wage of about $28.00. The lowest-paid Soft Skills Trainers make around $15 hourly, while the highest-paid can earn more than $47 per hour.
Top 10 States for Soft Skills Trainer’s Salary
Soft Skills Trainers in the following states make the highest median hourly wage in the U.S.:
Soft Skills Trainer Resources
Need more information? We put together this list of extra resources to assist you as you continue exploring a career as a Soft Skills Trainer.
On the Web
Training Industry
Information and tools for business and training professionals
MindTools
Resource for career skills
On LinkedIn
Sandy Chernoff
Soft skills consultant and trainer
Audrey Halpern
Soft skills trainer
Industry Groups
NSSA
National Soft Skills Association which provides research and best practices in the teaching and assessing of soft skills
ASST
Association of Soft Skills Trainers for all those who are involved in improving the soft skills of others