During the job application and interview process, employers look for applicants with hard skills and soft skills. When used correctly, they work together to form a powerhouse resume that provides the hiring manager a glimpse into the job seeker.

Hard skills are taught skills. They are quantifiable and are often learned in school, through certifications, or in previous work experience. Hard skills are specific to each job and are often the basis of job requirements.

Soft skills, on the other hand, are subjective skills that are much harder to quantify. Also known as “people skills” or “interpersonal skills,” soft skills relate to the way you relate to and interact with other people. Soft skills tend to be transferrable between jobs or industries but are more difficult to quantify on a resume than hard skills.

A combination of hard skills and soft skills forms a well-rounded job applicant. While hard skills are quite different than soft skills, the combination of the two creates a good balance between knowledge and interpersonal attributes. Hard skills show mastery and proficiency while soft skills show communication and relational abilities.

Soft skills become more tangible and believable when combined with accomplishments and measurable results.

Your hard skills demonstrate your ability to perform a job, but they don’t indicate how well you work on a team or how organized you are. Your soft skills help define the type of person you are to work with. If you’re a “self-starter,” for example, your employer knows you’re not going to need a lot of hand-holding.

Some positions place a higher value on soft skills than hard ones, such as sales or human resources positions that require you to interact face-to-face or possess savvy interpersonal abilities.

Unlike hard skills, it’s hard to point to specific evidence that you possess a soft skill. If an employer is looking for someone who knows a programming language, you can share your grade in a class or point to a program you created using the language. But how can you show that you have a work ethic or any other soft skill?

Just saying you have the skill isn’t very meaningful. Instead, your best bet is to demonstrate that you possess this quality by sharing examples of times when you used it. Tell them a story, give them a glimpse of how you react in different situations, and tell them what you’ve learned.