ASSIGNMENT 1

MoL WRITING AND TRANSLATION COHORT 4

WEEK 1 ASSIGNMENT: INTRODUCTION TO ONLINE WORK AND SOFT SKILLS

Name……SAMUEL ONYANGO ODOYO

Email address……odoyosamuel94@gmail.com

Phone number…………0725223618

Instructions

i) Read and understand all the questions

ii) Answer all the questions in the spaces provided

iii) This Quiz is due on Friday 5pm

A. (i) Differentiate between Soft skills and hard skills giving example

Hard skills are job-specific, relevant to each position and seniority level. In other words, each position in
every company will require a unique hard skills list. For example, an accountant needs to know how to
reconcile bank statements, while that knowledge is unnecessary for a developer. At the same time,
reconciliation is important for accountants no matter their level of experience, but preparing business
budgets is a skill that’s not usually required of a junior accountant while soft skills are general
characteristics, relevant to personality traits. Some soft skills you’d like to see in all employees regardless
of their position or expertise, while other soft skills make sense in certain jobs and are less important in
others. For example, if you value collaboration in your company, you want to hire employees who are
great team players and can communicate well with others. On the other hand, networking and
relationship-building skills might be essential for sales and marketing roles, but irrelevant for engineering
roles. Likewise, leadership abilities make sense for people who’ll manage a team no matter their
department.

(ii) How significant are soft skills in the workplace?

Soft Skills Improve Customer Service- With soft skills, your employees will actively listen and effectively
identify problems and establish solutions per your customer’s needs. They will channel more compassion
and empathy while dealing with your customer’s problems, which will positively impact your customer
service.
Soft Skills Improve Employee Retention- The retention rate of your organization increases when you start
caring about boosting your employee’s soft skills. Through this, your employees will realize that you care
about their professional growth and they will decide to support you.

Soft Skills Make for a Healthy Working Environment-While listening and communicating are essential for
leading a workforce, empathizing with the challenges faced by your employees is equally important.
Empathy nurtures a supportive and positive working environment and eliminates unhealthy competition.
Within this environment, employees are more prepared to take chances and move upwards. Employees
feel more empowered to speak their thoughts in a workplace where empathy is practiced, and they are
more likely to feel empowered to provide honest feedback for the organization. These insights are
valuable for streamlining processes and uncovering more operational efficiencies.

Soft Skills Help You Solve Problems More Efficiently- Developing soft skills such as communication and
listening will make the employees proactive in recognizing problems and barriers to their goals.
Moreover, they will identify problems and implement accurate solutions or fixes.

(iii) Give a scenario where soft skills helped you overcome an obstacle/challenge.

Soft skills helped me overcome job pressure due to the strict deadline that was given and the pressure
that was being piled on me was too much. But with my good soft skills, I was able to overcome the
pressure and managed to deliver the job in time.

B. Article and content writing follows a specific process. In 2 paragraphs describe the process of
writing a good article and/content. Be sure to reference your work in APA style.

The first step on how to write an article is to choose your topic. Come up with a specific topic to avoid
scattered contents. List the objectives your content must-have. Decide the scope and boundaries of your
article. It is easier to compose an article that has a target topic to tackle. Once you’re happy with the
choice of topic, be sure to stick to it. After you settle your main topic, you must know your target
readers. Ask yourself, what do you want your readers to learn from you using your article? What
information do they need to know in your article? And define your writing approach. After selecting your
main topic and target audience, do research existing works. Find articles with the same taste in idea and
content flow. You’ll need to back up yourself once you start writing the article. Pick up ideas and support
your claims. If you’re writing an opinion, you must claim facts from research and authors as your basis.
Bullets and adding keywords to highlight your article eases the flow of writing. And you must never
forget to site your resources.

As you gather data and ideas from your research, create a rough draft. Topic outlining is an effective way
of letting your ideas flow. Jot down concepts and create section breaks. Write every idea that pops into
your mind. Mind your grammar, punctuation, and analytical factors lesser at this step. Just let your mind
and hands work. Inject ideas to form your article. Use the bullets and keywords to solidify your article’s
work. After your rough draft, the next step in the article writing guide is to edit your content. Be sure to
follow correct grammar usage and punctuation. Scan for misspelled words and track your article’s flow.
Ideas must come in order to avoid directing your readers away. Spot proper usage of words and align it
to your target audience. As any article writing guide would say, proofread your work. Don’t just trust
your editing skills. Proofreading defines how your article sounds and how it affects your readers. Grab
the chance to spot for any more mistakes and aim for a seamless reading flow.

C. Name 5 online platforms that offer Writing and Translation jobs.

Fiver, Upwork, Freelancer.com, iwriter, FlexJobs