The Most Important Job Skills to Acquire Before Finding a Job

The Most Important Skills to Learn for a Lucrative Job

Summer is the best time to enlarge your mind by learning something new and acquire useful skills for both student life and the prospective career life. The advantages of learning new things are difficult to overestimate: you will feel more powerful, smart, productive, and above all, it will open new cultures and opportunities for you. Besides, learning something new will come in handy when it comes to your career. Research on what HR experts consider the most fundamental skills shows that having technical mindset and know-how, and remarkable academic qualifications is not a top requirement of potential employers. Although the latter is surely a prerequisite, the emphasis has changed.

Nowadays, employers and recruiters have understood that it is much easier to train bright individuals how to fulfill the peculiarities of any role. This is as long as they have already picked up a harder-to-teach skill set. This skill set consists of critical thinking, soft skills, and some basic competences in a few areas of expertise.

If you strive to receive the job of your dream or advance in the career you are already persuading, consider the skills below, define where you stand, and come up with a way to hone the areas you are not so well-developed in.

• Communicative skills (listening, speaking, and writing)

Brilliant communicative skills are probably the most longed-for skills among employers. From the very beginning of talking to you, your employer will place you under scrutiny.

No matter of what it is: the manner you answer the phone, the manner you provide information to the customers on email, your CV and cover letter, or the manner you behave during the interview, they will always pay a particular attention to your communicative skills.

For a great number of jobs, it is a requirement to possess well-developed communicative skills so that the employees can clearly and comprehensively express themselves both while talking to people and writing. 

Displaying well-developed communicative skills is all about being able to put across information to other individuals in a clear and simple manner. Brilliant communication means also understanding orders, picking up new skills, making requests, putting questions, and easily conveying information. 

Communicative skills are therefore a must regardless of what position you hold and your level of seniority. As long as you have some problems with your communication, your efficiency, morale, and goals can be put into question. In the nowadays competitive jobs world, communicative skills in business are in demand, and thus recruiters are searching for candidates who can clearly convey information, negotiate and confidently cope with customers. Listening attentively, speaking comprehensively, and putting others at ease are basic skills to possess for any employee.

• Analytical and research skills

As long as you consider a question/problem presented to your kids' stuff, be very cautious so that not to give a hasty answer. Take some time to analyze the situation, look at it from different angles, and if it is possible, ask for some time to go and do some research to find out more. Analytical and research skills may also relate to the examination of results and data with an aim of finding usable information. In simple words, these are the tools that can help those who often act before considering the consequences of taking a decision. Being analytical, but also having well-developed research skills, distinguishes one employee from the other. It displays your resolution, your ability to look at the problem from different perspectives, and your commitment to be 100% sure before giving an answer to your employer. It could mean the difference between a poorly deliberate idea and something that can bring in the company a good profit.

• Flexibility/adaptability

The ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously and being flexible enough to work in rapidly changing situations and environments are highly sought after. Nowadays, a job description is very volatile and can change its shape all the time. A person that can work coping with multiple changing circumstances is highly in demand. Having the ability to adjust from one working environment to another, or even from one sort of task to another, is a huge asset. It displays the one's commitment to the organization and will have a beneficial effect on their career advancement.

• Ability to plan out, organize, and prioritize work

Clichéd as it may sound, an employee who can display that he/she has been able to plan and organize his/her work is priceless. Thus, pay particular attention to the way you plan out your assignments, and make sure you meet all the deadlines you are set. 

Prioritizing your work is not a piece of cake. Your task is to define what must be done first. It is a fundamental process, but as soon as you get attuned to it, organizing and planning will not be that perplexing. If you understand how to efficiently organize and prioritize your assignments, you will grasp how to be more productive, as well. 

The fact that a worker can adhere to fixed timelines and can give pieces of information easily and speedily is indicative that he/she is second to none and can always cope with the assigned task or information. In a similar way, understanding what tasks to put first and which ones to do later is one of the most job important skills. 

Your must-have set of skills can greatly vary depending on the position you occupy and surely there could be very specific skills, abilities, and knowledge you have to possess to fulfill the job. These are so-called prime employability skills, or otherwise transferable skills – the essential skills that will boost your effectiveness at work, regardless of the job you perform.

Working on both your hard and soft skills is fundamental in making yourself as advantageous and indispensable to potential employers as possible. It is very likely that tech skills will not cease to be extremely sought after but being able to communicate efficiently, being considerate of details and well-organized will not become out-of-date, as well. The key to advancing is to find the right balance and develop the skills which are sought after in your chosen field.