Professional Skills For All Of Us
While still in college, it would really be a big help if you already know what kind of career you'd like to pursue in the future…
On the other hand…next to technical expertise, most employers are looking for soft skills among their applicants. These are skills that allow a prospective employee build better relationships with colleagues, superiors, and in many instances, clients. For most bosses, these skills are just as important as having a thorough grasp of the technical concepts behind a particular task.
1. Communication skills
Employers are looking for workers who know how to express themselves well. Examples of good communication skills include coherent writing, effective selling approaches and the ability to explain things at a very basic level.
2. Ability to work with others
Most successful projects are accomplished by teams rather than individuals. Even if one employee is assigned to be the point-person for a task, the responsibility will often have to be delegated to at least a few colleagues and all of these people must be able to work as a team.
3. Ability to go with the flow
Not everything will work well for us all the time. And there will always be changes in the office environment that we will have to get used to. We may one day see having more of our colleagues and even bosses getting younger, more of our work processes being completed electronically and in some instances, things just not happening the way we want. As we get older in our work environment, it is important that we are constantly able to positively deal with all these changes that are going on around us. Otherwise, our colleagues and more importantly our bosses, may see us as obsolete members of the team.
4. Problem solving
We will constantly be faced with work-related problems and our skills in dealing with them will always be tested. We have to think very hard about how we understand the problems we face at work, how we may be able to deal with them, which of our colleagues we work with to solve the problem and what measurable data we use to determine the outcome.
5. Keen observation
After we collect data and manipulate them, our analytical and interpretative skills will come into play. It is important that we are able to write a complete story about what we did and how it may impact events at work. If future problems are foreseen, this is also the time to suggest a few possible solutions to them.
6. Working out conflicts
It is important to build mutually beneficial relationships with our co-workers as often as possible. This will sometimes mean being able to persuade and negotiate with them. Our colleagues must see our suggestions as "win-win" solutions to the problems that confront us.
Jun242010