The world around us is constantly evolving and so are the businesses that we humans have created. This evolution of our businesses goes hand in hand with the need to up-skill ourselves and remain relevant in today’s job market. There are two basic groups in which our skill sets can be divided into: 1) Technical (or Hard Skills) and 2) Soft Skills. Hard Skills are the technical skills which can be defined and measured, whereas Soft Skills are the immeasurable skills; which are as important as our technical skills; in enabling us to do our job successfully. After a careful study of research done across the world in last few decades and our interactions with recruiters from various corporate houses, we are listing Top 5 Soft Skills, which employers have deemed extremely important in today’s business place.

Effective Communication :

Communication is at the heart of everything in our life, communicating with our partners, talking to a grocer, commuting on a bus, and etc. etc. Basically everything we do requires us to communicate with others.  And what follows is that communication within the workplace is also extremely crucial, both written and oral communications have become increasingly essential when it comes to excelling at our work. To be able to communicate the relevant pieces of information to the relevant stakeholders, is what constitutes efficient communication. Even if you feel that you are a good communicator, there is always some scope for improvement. There are quite a few online courses which can help you formalize a strategy for improving your skills and give an outline of what all aspects should be covered while communicating. This is a skill which has been a constant for a long time and will never die out; making it all the more important for us to invest in building these skills today.

Critical Thinking :

Critical thinking is an extremely important skill for any professional in today’s world. Critical thinking involves analysing any given situation and compartmentalizing the information at hand to assess the situation. Today, whether you are developer or a Vice President, you are viewed as a partner for your customer and are expected to help them in solving their business problems. Without being able to critically assess the business problems for our customers we will not be able to add value in our potential solutions for our customers. Critical thinking becomes more and more vital as you progress in your career and have more responsibilities within your organization. Critical thinking as a skill can be developed and there are multiple courses available online which can help you hone these skills.

Problem Solving :

If you ask any interviewer, this is the first skill that they would test candidates upon. What is important is the approach which you adopt to attempt solving the problem in front of you. Most of the interviewers are not at all interested in the end result, rather they are interested in the thought process which you used to attempt to find a solution for the problem in front of you. There are multiple strategies and ideas on how to improve your problem solving skills, and one should definitely spend some time on improving them.

Emotional Quotient (EQ) :

What is Emotional intelligence? if you search it online then you will find a lot of definitions for it, but it can simply be defined as “one’s ability to deal with other people”. EQ has a lot of facets to it, but it all boils down to a few basic things like managing your team members & their expectations from you, keeping a good level of self-motivation and helping in maintaining a positive work environment. We want to make it clear here, that EQ is an important skill which can be and should be worked upon. There is a misconception that EQ cannot be improved upon, which is definitely not the case. All people with high EQs have reached there by constantly working on the various levers of EQ and taking conscious steps to improve it.  To get started, you should take a look at some of the introductory courses offered by online portals and based on that devise your own strategy to make gains in your EQ, because the only thing that works for EQ is to constantly work on improving them.

Creativity & Innovation :

For businesses all over the world, the ability to quickly react to customer needs and problem areas, is seen as a critical factor for remaining relevant in the market place. For this they need their employees to be creative and innovate ways to resolve these problems for their customers/users. Organizations have come to value innovation at the workplace and have taken a lot of steps in the last few years to promote a culture of innovation. As an individual, we should understand the significance of generating ideas and taking efforts to bring these ideas to life. The best ideas do not come into being after just one day of ideating, it takes an effort and perseverance; knowing this and working towards this can help in honing this skill.  

We hope you found this information useful.

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