Beyond the abilities and knowledge needed for each specific profession, professional in every discipline needs a particular set of qualities, skills, and behaviours. The hard skills are the ones required to do a certain technical job. Such skills are learnt along the academic course. The other set primarily carries intangible soft skills that help you interact well with the people around you. These skills can’t be taught in a classroom or measured on a paper. Professional skills are required for nearly every job, and a professional is the hybrid product of hard and soft skills. 

A research from the Society of Human Resource Management established that the employers are more interested in the soft skills of a candidate than the technical abilities like comprehension and mathematics. The key reason being the fact that the technical abilities already come certified in the form of a degree in a certified program from the university, so it is granted that the grades show a reasonable picture of a candidate’s basic technical abilities. 

Soft skills are a bit hard to qualify but far important in a corporate setting as they are the key to building relationships, gaining visibility, and creating more opportunities for advancement. You can be best at what you do, but if your soft skills are not up to the mark then you are limiting your chances of career development.

Top Skills for Career Development

Accomplished career counsellors at CounsellingX have put together a list of soft skills which are vital for the career development of professionals:

• Communication

Communication skills primarily involve written, verbal, and non-verbal communication. A modern form of written communication is email correspondence. Verbal and non-verbal communication includes skills such as networking, facilitating, advocating your cause, persuasion, and the ability to manage positive relationships with people around you. Positive relationships with the boss, managers, and colleagues reinforce a positive career development. 

• Public Speaking 

Almost every job calls for public speaking once in a while, whether it is presentations, meetings, or a small talk to a group in some way. Professionals should be able to speak up and present information effectively. The ability to articulate dialogues and receive criticism comes from self-confidence and refined social skills.

Professionals who are able to speak tactfully in order to handle, inspire, and pacify a group of people show great potential to their employers, as a company is always in need of team leaders.

• Teamwork

One of the distinguishable trait of corporate culture is to work in teams or some sort of group in order to help company achieve its goal. The teamwork skills that professionals need are delegation, conflict resolution, problem solving, team building, team management, and relationship building.

The ability to effectively complete the tasks delegated among the team members helps a professional understand the mechanics and wisdom behind teamwork and task delegation. Understanding the mechanics behind a process is the key to grow in any profession.

• Time Management 

In professional life there are deadlines. You work according to a timeline and complete a variety of tasks. You need to organise your time in order to practice timeliness, meet deadlines, and be punctual. Time management requires an intrinsic motivation that acts as a self-starter for the professional. Workers who come to work on time, and show up for meeting ahead of the time are generally considered as hard workers. So managing time productively can help you grow in a company.

Management skills such as planning, organisation, prioritisation, project management, self-regulation, and multi-tasking come in handy when managing one’s time.

• Leadership

People often believe that the ability to lead is an intrinsic quality but that is not true. Everyone can develop leadership skills by being accountable and ethically responsible. The ability to coach and mentor people, manage and coordinate resources, take tough decision, set goals, promote growth mind-set, and handle people tactfully is crucial to a leader. No one is born with these skills, these are developed over the time from experience and motivation.

• Flexibility

Every professional should be able to show a degree of flexibility and the ability to adapt to the change. It is very important to empathise with people in order to understand different perspectives and change according to the conditions and requirements of workflow. Skills that show your flexibility are situation analysis, anger management, patience, and perceptiveness.

• Interpersonal Skills 

Interpersonal skills are required to interact with other people in a workplace. Successful professional networking and the resultant career development relies upon the interpersonal skills of a professional. Competency develops self-confidence which is helpful in managing positive relationships with colleagues. Emotional intelligence, self-awareness, respect, self-promotion, stress management, practicality, integrity, and many other such skills are required to harmonize your interpersonal relationships and implicitly control your career development.

You can go to CounsellingX.com and avail the services of highly accomplished career counsellors who have a proven track record of mentoring professionals in the skills essential for survival in a corporate setting.