Making Use Of Your Soft Skills To Gain Employment
Securing employment is difficult at any time, but it has been particularly challenging in recent months. However, you can help to increase your chance of employment by highlighting your soft skills to employers, either in your CV, cover letter, or, if you’re fortunate enough to get that far, during interviews. If you’re wondering what counts as a soft skill, then read on.
Teamworking
Even when applying for a job where you have your own individual tasks to do, teamworking is important because people work better in a supportive environment. Each individual will have their own strengths and weaknesses, which helps when someone is struggling to understand a task and needs some help.
As far as the business is concerned, it often results in a more efficient process and higher productivity. So, it’s no surprise that headhunters such as Daversa Partners favor applicants who are team players.
Resolving Conflicts
There are several reasons employers prefer applicants who have experience in resolving conflicts. Given that most full-time positions involve working with the same people for eight hours or more a day, there can sometimes be conflicts in the office. Being able to diffuse them is essential to avoid disputes affecting morale and productivity.
Another important reason is when working with members of the public, there will be complaints at some point. Being able to deal with them in a calm way reflects well on the company.
As with most soft skills, they don’t always have to be gained from paid work. You can use examples from voluntary work or your home life. For example: if you have a large family, you can use instances like having to diffuse arguments in the household.
Adaptability
The ability to adapt means if other team members are unexpectantly away from work, you’ll be able to step in and take on some of their workload. As things don’t always go to plan, quick thinking and flexibility sets you apart from someone who doesn’t respond well to change. Showing an employer you can adapt could give you the edge over someone who can’t.
Again, being able to provide examples shows you can cope with an unplanned change of events. These things happen even in the most organized businesses, so it’s important to be able to adapt.
A Strong Work Ethic
This one’s easier to explain. Employers want to know that whichever applicant they choose, he or she will have a set of core values in their approach to work. They include finding ways to motivate yourself, so you don’t have to be constantly supervised. They want to know that you’ll complete tasks in the required time, particularly when they aren’t the most enjoyable or easiest.
Even in your dream job, there will be responsibilities you like less than others.
Strong Communication Skills
Having strong communication skills aids you in helping your team. It’s important to communicate with your colleagues and customers or clients in a way they understand. It decreases the chances of misunderstandings, ensures everyone knows what they are doing, or how your product or service can benefit them.
Communication isn’t always about talking either. It’s also important to listen. Finding out what the other person wants will give you the information to help them effectively.
Interpersonal Skills
Interpersonal skills involve a range of abilities, including showing patience, being assertive, decision making and managing negotiations. Knowing when to use each of these attributes is a skill in itself. If a client is explaining a long-standing problem, they have with your company, it can be tempting to interrupt.
Often displaying patience while you allow them to air their grievances will result in the same behavior while you explain how you can rectify the problems.
Being assertive and making decisions will help to keep productivity going if your colleagues are differing over which course of action to take to move things forward. Negotiating skills can go a long way towards securing new clients for the business. So, of course, these are all important skills in an employee.
Leadership
Whether applying for a leadership role or not, it’s still beneficial to have this skill. Some employers want to invest in someone who will progress and stay with their company for a long time. This means they don’t have to pay to recruit someone else, you will have the training and knowledge of how they prefer to operate and will have built strong relationships with customers and clients.
Being able to fill in when needed or apply for a leadership role after working for the organization for a certain length of time, means they don’t have to seek new employees for these roles, who won’t know as much about the business as you.
If you take the time to think about these skills and some examples of when you’ve used them, it could help you stand out to an employer, when you use them to promote yourself in your job search.
Brian Zeng
Founder of Ponbee.com: I like to write about self-improvement and achieving excellence, and believe that it is these qualities that ultimately make people successful in life.
