Top Skills to Grow Your Career

Growing your career is a continuous journey that you only finish when you retire that’s why you are ever encouraged to ever grow your career. You can always learn something new to improve your performance. And you will always need to keep up with all the latest trends and software that come up.

So, it is an everyday effort to be the best professional you can be. Below are the top skills you can learn or sharpen to grow your career no matter what industry you’re in.

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Communication

Communication is a soft skill that every professional needs in any kind of job. It gives you the ability to communicate ideas in a way other people can understand. In teamwork environments, having great communication skills is a must, especially now that many people work from home

To grow your career it would help if you excelled in all communication types, written and spoken. And with our world moving to the digital realm more each year, every company uses at least one online communication platform. It can be email, chatrooms, instant messages, or any others. Strong written communication is vital.

Having communication skills will also make your job easier by helping you build relationships with workers and clients. You will be able to participate in meetings by giving insights that make a difference, and also deal with difficult customers if the occasion presents itself.

Time Management

A company is like a well-oiled machine and each employee is a gear. If one gear doesn’t move simultaneously with the rest, then the engine will probably collapse. That’s why you should work on your time management skills if you want to grow your career. No matter the profession, you will have different responsibilities to ensure the continued operation of the company or department.

If you take too long with your tasks, that will probably delay other functions for the team, meaning the whole project or operation will also get delayed. If you arrive on time for every meeting and deliver your results by deadlines or even before, you will be perceived as a more productive and responsible worker.

Public Speaking

Public speaking will be the next step after developing strong communication skills. Depending on your job, you may have to make public presentations. Even if you don’t have to do them often, you will have at least some situations where you have to explain something to a group of people.

If you have panic attacks thinking about speaking to a group of five or 10 people, you will probably perform poorly in other situations like interviews or as a manager. Instead, you should build your confidence, and practice articulation and projection. These abilities would help you become an excellent public speaker.

Interpersonal Skills

Communication is a complex process that goes beyond the words we speak or listen to. As humans, we use several types of languages when talking to others, and words are just one of them. Other forms like body language are used almost unconsciously, so it’s harder to control them.

Interpersonal skills allow you to communicate, motivate, guide, and lead your coworkers effectively. Which skills enter this group is debatable, but any ability that helps you have social interactions belong in it. It can be empathy, knowing how to listen, reading other people’s moods and acting accordingly, and many others.

Curiosity

Curiosity is an essential skill for anyone who wants to grow in their career. If you never learn anything new after receiving your degree, then you will probably fail. Industries are always growing and changing, and you have to be able to adapt. Part of adapting is learning new skills to keep up with the latest trends. And part of learning is to be curious.

Curiosity gives you the desire to find answers, so you will probably learn things that go even beyond your responsibilities. But that is a very good thing because you will probably go further than your coworkers and build an excellent reputation as an employee.

Resilience

Resilience is the ability to overcome and adapt to difficult situations and hardships. It can also be called adaptability, and it is essential to be able to maintain performance levels even in stressful environments. According to Linkedin, adaptability is in the top skills in high demand this year. It is not a surprise considering everything that has happened with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Social Media Management

Social media has become one of the main methods of interacting with our peers. Everyone has at least one social media account, even if it is just to keep up with the news. But, social media is also becoming more common in the recruitment process. A survey showed that 70% of employers screen candidates by looking at their social media profiles.

That’s why you should become proficient at social media management. This includes creating a profile that represents who you are and makes you look professional. Even if you have a Linkedin profile to make applications, many employers go to Instagram or Facebook to learn more about you. And they can dismiss your candidature for content you’ve published before.

SEM/SEO

Search engine marketing and search engine optimization are part of digital marketing strategies that many recruiters use today. They are techniques that search engines use to understand the content of each website and give the best results to searchers.

In your case, you don’t have to become an expert, just familiarize yourself enough with the topic so you can use it in your favor. For example, you can learn a little bit about keywords and include them in your profiles to increase your visibility to employers.

If you are a computer science expert, maybe highlight the skills that are in high demand and that employers look for. That way, when a recruiter uses these words in their search, your profile will probably come up.

In Summary
You have to continue learning throughout your career to be successful. The top soft skills you can concentrate on are strong communication, public speaking, interpersonal skills, curiosity, and resilience.

You can also work on your time management skills to keep all your tasks organized. And the two soft skills that will help you find the best job opportunities are social media management and SEM and SEO practices.