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Accomplish January 8, 2019
Soft doesn't mean unimportant.
Around college and high school, students start to recognize the importance of soft skills. Soft skills, such as communication and adaptability, are traits that benefit the workplace without a way to measure their success. For certain positions, recruiters want to see a very specific set of soft skills. To emphasize these strengths in your next cover letter or interview, use ENTITY’s soft skills list for inpsiration.
Teamwork is one of the most important examples of soft skills. Companies don’t want to hire candidates that can’t work with others. So in an interview, be sure to state that you’re a team player.
ENTITY Academy, for example, prepares its mentees for real-world jobs by doing lots of group projects. When I was a summer intern, my teammates and I made cakes, mosaics and presentations.
We also made a lot of friends. Forced team bonding has its perks.
Employers want workers who can adapt to their needs and keep up with the pace of the company. This can mean anything from learning new tech to switching roles on a project.
So if you’re quick to understand new software, brag about it! If you’re not, explain what you do to solve this problem. And always emphasize your willingness to fit the company’s needs.
This soft skills list isn’t complete without communication. After all, it’s one of the most essential elements of business.
When employees don’t communicate properly, their work is severely disrupted. Say someone sends out an email for a meeting at 1:00, but the time gets changed to 12:30. If they decide to spread the information by word of mouth, and a few workers don’t hear the news, those workers will miss the meeting.
Companies rely on their employees to consistently check their emails, stay available for contact during business hours, give updates on any complications and reach out to their supervisors. Because communication is so important, internships often emphasize honesty and responsibility to their younger interns. At ENTITY Academy, 2018 mentee Cristina Pimentel stated, “Since I was always honest with my mentors, if I was behind my work, they were understanding and accommodating with extending my deadlines.”
Leaders are always necessary at different companies. Someone has to show direction and bring team morale, right?
But be cautious. While companies like employees who aren’t afraid to step up to the plate, they also want workers that can take on other roles if necessary. So take pride in your leadership skills, but also emphasize that you don’t limit yourself to supervising titles.
Building relationships is a nicer way of saying “networking.” If you’re looking for a word to put on your resume, try “sociable.”
Building relationships is essential to business. If you’re applying to a certain company, you need to know someone (who knows someone) that can get your resume to the right person. If you need funding, you need to know someone (who knows someone) looking to invest. And if you want a professional favor, you need to know someone (who knows someone) that can help you.
But don’t be selfish! At ENTITY Academy, I learned that you should think less about building your network and more about building relationships. By forming meaningful connections with others, you can accomplish so much more than asking an old co-worker for a favor every once in a while.
Out of this entire soft skills list, problem-solving is probably the most attractive to companies. Recruiters want to know that you can calmly and diligently face challenges or obstacles in your work. If you do, it’s one less problem to add to a supervisor’s (very full) plate.
While you shouldn’t boast about this skill if you don’t actually have it, most corporations want their employees to have basic problem-solving abilities. So before an interview, come up with a few ways you solved a problem in the workplace. You can even talk about that spreadsheet you managed to recover.
Not everyone has organizational abilities, so if you do, make sure to add it to your cover letter! Organization can lead to efficiency, which is always a plus for companies. Jobs with multiple tasks and heavy scheduling usually expect this from their applicants.
Confidence is the only part of this soft skills list that you can’t put on a resume. But you should definitely exude it during an interview! Candidates who are self-assured and comfortable in a professional setting seem like they have experience. It’s hard to dislike employees who know what they’re doing.
But confidence is more than having experience. True confidence involves asking a supervisor for help or communicating when something goes wrong.
ENTITY Academy participant Fanny Martinez reached out to her mentor about her insecurities as a writer. Through their discussions, she emerged more confident and determined to work on her skills. Companies want to know that their workers can improve in the same way, so don’t be afraid to describe your previous failures. Simply make sure to explain how you grew from the experience.
In this increasingly fast technological world, multitasking is also growing in importance. While it’s one of the few non-essential soft skills in the workplace, it’s an extra pro to have on your resume.
Multitasking hints at efficiency and productivity, so if you can do it, emphasize it!
10 Marketing Yourself
This soft skill is less about saying you can do it and more about doing it. Marketing yourself is one of the most important aspects of the job application process, but it seems as though nobody ever talks about it.
You might also know this skill as “branding.” This means controlling your image through professional documents, social media and the way you present yourself.
When I was starting out as an ENTITY Academy mentee, I wasn’t too fond of this idea. But then ENTITY taught me that my brand already exists. Through my social media, resume and behaviors, I already portray an image that recruiters respond to. “Marketing yourself” simply means controlling the image that is already out there.
So take off all your “inappropriate” photos, add a theme to your professional documents and prepare to show your personality in your interview answers. And have fun while doing it!
Hopefully, this soft skills list helped you out with your job application process. Whether you’re editing your LinkedIn profile, creating a resume or preparing for your interview, ENTITY wishes you the best of luck.
