Which is more important, soft skills or technical skills? Why?

Both are important, some people, at the extremes, get by with only one set of either only hard skills, or only soft skills.  Both groups are notorious, so it's best to focus on developing both, simultaneously.  A doctor or engineer with only soft skills can still function in their field, or at least part of their field, like technical sales, or health care administration.

While technical skills are essential to do a job, soft skills help in doing the job more effectively. Both are equally important, but as you go up the corporate ladder, you will find yourself using soft skills more than technical skills, in general.

Three Key Differences between Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills

·        1. To be good at hard skills usually takes smarts or IQ (also known as your left brain-the logical center).  To be good at soft skills usually takes Emotonal Intelligence or EQ (also known as your right brain- the emotional center).  Examples of hard skills include math, physics, accounting, programming, finance, biology, chemistry, statistics, etc… Examples of soft skills include self management skills like self confidence, stress management and people skills like communication or networking skills. 

·        2. Hard skills are skills where the rules stay the same regardless of which company, circumstance or people you work with. In contrast, soft skills are skills where the rules changes depending on the company culture and people you work with.  For example,  programming is a hard skill.  The rules for how you can be good at creating the best code to do a function is the same regardless of where you work.  Communication skills are a set of soft skills.   The rules for how to be effective at communications change and depend on your audience or the content you are communicating.  You may communicate well to fellow programmers about technical details while struggle significantly to communicate clearly to senior managers about your project progress and the support needed.

·        3. Hard skills can be learned in school and from books.  There are usually designated level of competency and a direct path as to how to excel with each hard skill.  For example, accounting is a hard skill.  You can take basic accounting and then advanced accounting courses.  You can then work to get experience and take an exam and be certified as a CPA, etc..  In contrast, there is no simple path to learn soft skills.  Most soft skills are not taught well in school and have to be learned on the job by trial and error.  

Technical skills are important to do our job, every one of us and if we use the soft skills we succeed better because we work together and even engineers should have soft skills because they work with people too!

I believe both soft and hard skills are essential. However, on my opinion, we first look, hit and develop the soft skills side in order for them (employee) understand, accept and believe on what they are doing and what other things or task may be assigned to them. Then followed or simultaneously  hit the technical or hard skills. Hit the heart first the the mind.

Both the skills are equally important, however if we have to choose one then soft skills would take a lead because:

Definition of soft skills:

-Personal attributes that enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people.

-Soft skills are something that a person has to develop from within and with personal interest 

Technical skills: its a bit easier to teach, and its a skills that you can teach any one with practise

Soft skill and that is culture related.

Soft skill is inculcated from the childhood and difficult to change by the time one start learning Technical skill.

Soft can train Technical but Technical can't train soft.

Both are very important but some jobs need more technical skills and other level of jobs need more soft skills

It is depend on your position on the organization chart , both of them can effective

Tech­ni­cal abil­ity quickly loses value when employ­ees can’t empathize with a customer’s sit­u­a­tion,

I think it is purely depends upon the nature of work. Thanks.

While it’s true that technical skills are very important, customer experience falters when employees lack the soft skills needed to effectively convey information to customers. Are soft skills more important than technical skills? Yes, I believe so. Organizations frequently allocate mass amounts of time and money into technical skills training, and forget about the more important soft skills training. Technical ability quickly loses value when employees can’t empathize with a customer’s situation, are unable to diagnose the core issue in a timely manner, or are incapable of adequately conveying information without using technical jargon. Employees with sub-standard miscommunication skills will tarnish your brand experience.

so every one needs soft skills more than technical to have as an opinion and to improve he is always right then the big company search for who have strong soft skills than  technical  because the technical skills come later.

I hope you got my idea