Today, new requirements are imposed on probation staff, which consist not only in the possession of hard professional skills (hard skills), but also personal qualities, which together constitute soft skills and play an important role in the development and construction of a trajectory of personal and professional development.

The article identifies and groups, in accordance with certain characteristics, the main soft skills of probation specialists, which complement highly specialised knowledge and mastery of professional skills, helping them to become successful specialists in their field.

The ways of improving not only hard skills, but also soft skills of probation specialists are proposed.

The role of soft skills in building the trajectory of personal and professional development of probation specialists is determined.

The purpose of the article is to reveal the role of soft skills of probation staff and the peculiarities of the methodological foundations for shaping the trajectory of their personal and professional development.

The research methodology is based on the modern provisions of pedagogical science, psychology and law, reflects the interconnection of methodological approaches to the study of the process of forming soft skills of probation staff and the possibilities of personal and professional development.

Conclusions. Timely updating of educational programmes for advanced training, use of interactive educational technologies, motivation of academic staff to apply innovative methods of developing soft skills of personnel is one of the important issues of ensuring the quality of work of probation bodies. Practical development of certain tasks in the form of interactive learning (trainings, quests, webinars, round tables, mini-conferences) contributes to the change of value and semantic components of professional competence and influences the formation of soft skills of probation specialists, which allows them to build an individual self-education programme and a trajectory of personal and professional development

Key words: professional and personal development, trajectory of professional and personal development, probation staff, professional competence, self-improvement, self-education, self-development.

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