Communicating the Value of Soft Skills

When the skills you have are hard to quantify on a resume.

Anna Burgess Yang
4 min readJan 25, 2021
Photo by Bram Naus on Unsplash

I recently decided to re-enter the job market. After 15 years at a loan management software company, ending as the product manager and overseeing the customer service department, I wanted something different. My job had reached a point of cruise control.

After thinking for several months, I determined that I wanted to go in an entirely different direction with my career. Rather than relying on a skill set in banking and product that I had spent so long developing, I was going to turn to my original passion: writing.

When I graduated from college, the landscape was much different for writers. The only career paths that seemed to earn a living were journalism and publishing a book, and I wasn’t interested in either of those. I was “good at” banking, so I went that route, even though my degree was in English.

I’m at the point where I am heavily applying for jobs that include “solid writer” in the list of desired skills. However, I am finding that a whole new skillset has emerged that I don’t have. For many jobs in content writing, the list of skills often includes SEO, analytics, A/B testing, and more.

My husband took a new job last year, and he found one quickly. He is a software…

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Anna Burgess Yang

Freelance Writer. Practical Tips for Solopreneurs. Career pivots are fun. 🎉 https://start.annabyang.com/