As the definition of work roles evolve, our skills to meet new demands must follow. If your current career path requires complex problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, people management, and emotional intelligence, then soft skills development and maintenance need to be top of mind.
Who’s Paying Attention?
There are eyes on these skills, and there are many of them. According to NACE’s Job Outlook Survey 2019, these are the top three respondents (employers) are seeking:
Communication skills (written): 82.0%
Problem-solving skills: 80.9%
Ability to work in a team: 78.7%
Further, employers want to see “evidence” of these skills. How can you cement these attributes as your core traits and prove it?
Communication Skills
All communication methods are essential; however, this one is specific to “written.” How well can you communicate your points when you don’t have an in-person/visual audience? There are two things for consideration:
If grammar is an issue for you, try using Grammarly. It is immensely comfortable and helpful.
Consider meaningful and thoughtful comments articles on LinkedIn. A step further is to start a blog on topics highlighting your interests and passions. Substack is a great platform to do it on.
Problem Solving Skills
Setbacks will happen. Be it at your hand or the company’s, tackling “problems” will show your knowledge and ability to execute. Even the smallest issue should be kept in a digital log where you can tag it and recall it if need be.
Ability To Work In a Team
This topic can be filed under “inter-personal skills” or “building internal relationships” (read what I wrote about it here). To me, this is the most valuable; without it, you cannot build foundational elements like trust and accountability.
This soft skill is hard to “prove” because it has to be genuine. Practice empathy and intentionally work to seek and hear your colleague’s input to yield a greater good for your company.
Audit
If you want to audit your soft skills to establish your point on the soft skill map, find people in your personal or work-life who exemplify these traits individually. Find one for each skill and study them, even take time to ask them about the characteristics you admire. Humble pie never hurt anybody.