These are the career skills you'll need to make it to the top.
If you speak to any recent graduate right now, they'll tell you straight up things are rough out here. We were told that all we needed to do was to go to college, graduate, and we'd be met with a nice high paying job complete with benefits and napping pods.
Well for most of us, things haven't quite played out that way. Not only is the pay often less than expected, but we're expected to know a wide range of things we never even learned in college.
Luckily one of the best ways to stand out as recent graduate is to gain career skills. While you'll certainly need to know the necessary skills related to your field, you'll also need to develop a set of transferable career skills, that will make you attractive to just about any employer.
What Are Transferable Career Skills?
Transferable career skils are those skills you can take with you practically anywhere. No matter the job or the industry these career skills are in demand, and can play a huge role in achieving career success.
These are the skills you're going to want to highlight on your resume, your LinkedIn page, and everywhere else. These are the career skills that will come in handy should you ever decide to switch careers.
How To Include Transferable Career Skills On Your Resume.
How do you include these skills on your resume?
You may be wondering how best to include these transferable career skills on your resume. One of the best places to bring attention to these skills, is to include them in your objectives. The objective section is the first thing a recruiter sees, so you'll definitely want to highlight these skills here. Your objective could read like "Highly motivated business graduate with proven leadership and communication skills seeking position as a Business Analyst at Lisbon Financial."
When highlighting these skills in the experience section of your resume, you'll want to do more than simply state that you have them. You'll want to be as specific as possible and explain how you've applied these skills in previous roles to achieve a company goal. If you've worked in retail, like many college students have, you could state how your skill as an effective communicator drove a specific dollar amount in sales.
5 Free Career Skills You Can Learn Are:
You're probably going to be surprised to find out what these career skills are. Some of the top transferable skills include:
Communication
If I was to ask you what career skill is most in demand by employers, chances are communication wouldn't even come to mind. If I was to ask you what career skill do employers believe recent graduates lack the most, again communication probably wouldn't even come to mind.The truth is that in the modern workplace where teamwork is emphasized, being an effective communicator is important. Effective communication skills include:
- Being able to speak clearly and being able to effectively communicate ideas.
- Being able to actively listen.
- Public Speaking and Presentation Skills.
- Effective writing skills.
Free Courses: Effective Communication Skills For Managers, The Ultimate Business Communication Course, Improving Communication Skills
Leadership
There used to be a time when employees were judged solely by how well they took orders. Well times are a changing. Many workplaces now value employees with an entrepreneurial attitude to work. That is employees who aren't afraid to step up and take charge when needed.As an employee you may be expected to actively participate in the development of new ideas, and even manage a team.
In demand leadership skills include:
- Being innovative
- Having a vision and being able to carry it out.
- Being able to delegate
- How to inspire others to achieve company goals
- Assess work and provide feedback
Analytical Skills
We are now living in a data driven world. Companies collect information on literally everything, from spending habits to demographics. This data is then used to achieve company goals, but before this can be done it has to be analysed, and that is where you come in.Many companies rely on data analysis to make important decisions from budgets, forecasts, and marketing plans. Good analytical skills can come in handy in other ways, like being able to interpret figures in a recent report, or identifying problems to be solved.
Analytical skills to gain include:
- Data collection
- Interpreting data
- Making decisions based on data on hand
- Being able to discover trends
Teamwork
Many companies achieve their overall goals through employee collaboration. As an employee not only will you be expected to work solo on projects, you'll also be expected to work just as effectively in a team.Teamwork may also include working with others outside of your department. For example if you're in marketing, you may be expected to collaborate with the sales team from time to time.
Valuable teamwork skills to gain include:
- Being reliable.
- Being respectful of others and their contributions.
- Knowing how to resolve conflict.
Computer Literacy
In this day and age where tech is now a part of our everyday lives, it definitely helps to be computer literate. Computer literacy isn't only beneficial to the Tech field, many jobs in business, healthcare, and other industries require candidates to be computer literate.Computer literacy can come in handy for building software that solve company problems, to designing marketing templates to promote company products.
Computer literacy skills to gain include:
- Knowledge of popular programming languages such as HTML.
- Knowing how to apply this knowledge to suit company needs.
- Advanced knowledge of popular computer programs such a Microsoft Excel.
So do you feel prepared to enter the job market? What transferable skills do you currently have? Are there any transferable career skills that you think we should include? Tell us in the comments below.
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