What soft skills are there that are crucial to your career success?
What are Soft Skills?
Whether you’re an IT expert, a highly experienced toolmaker, or a mechatronics specialist guaranteed to solve any technical problem – these are all measurable qualifications that are important for your professional success. But to truly get the most out of your career, you need more.
To be successful in a company, you need qualities like good communication skills or the ability to work excellently in a team. These skills are not tangible or measurable and are referred to as soft skills – often, they are the decisive factor for your professional success.
Why are Soft Skills so Important?
The key to the success of any company is satisfied and productive employees. This important aspect of business success can only be ensured if teamwork and collegial interaction are right. Soft skills facilitate these human interactions and are the crucial aspect for building relationships. Recruiters, therefore, pay less attention to your math skills and more to whether you and your personality are a good fit for the team.
The situation is similar regarding your future career path after you have been hired by a company. Imagine the following situation: You want to advance within your company but are reserved and barely communicate with your superiors and colleagues. Your visibility within the company and your chances of advancement would be much better if you were on your superiors’ radar and the other employees were used to friendly interactions from you.
In short, it’s useless if you are technically the absolute best in your field, but no one wants to work with you due to your lack of soft skills.
What Soft Skills are There?
In addition to teamwork and communication skills, there are, of course, many other soft skills that are important for your career success. Here are some examples:
- Resilience
- Flexibility
- Leadership skills
- Responsibility and reliability
- Willingness to learn
- Commitment
- Problem-solving skills
- Initiative
To give you a better idea of these soft skills, we will explain what they mean and why they are important:
Resilience
Everyday work is not always easy. Often, in your job, regardless of the industry, you have to manage several projects simultaneously. Resilience as a soft skill shows that you can meet these demands and withstand pressure.
Flexibility
Being flexible and able to adapt to various changes and dynamics is increasingly becoming a matter of course in our globalized, technologized world. Employers want to know that you can quickly settle into your new working environment and react well and quickly to changes or new tasks.
Leadership Skills
Leadership qualities are especially important in higher management positions and, accordingly, when you are aiming for a promotion within your company. Through leadership qualities, you can influence, motivate, and inspire your colleagues to work more effectively, creatively, or productively. Companies succeed in developing internally and being more successful with such employees, which is why this quality is so popular with employers.
Responsibility and Reliability
Responsibility and reliability mean that you always perform your tasks conscientiously and professionally, think about potential results in advance, are punctual, meet deadlines, and your colleagues can trust you.
Willingness to Learn
Your tasks rarely remain the same. Usually, in the course of your career, you have to acquire new skills or dedicate yourself to new tasks that you are not yet so familiar with. This may require further training under certain circumstances. It is important that you show recruiters that you are open to such further developments and learning new technical skills.
Commitment
As an outstanding employee, you go beyond your necessary activities where appropriate. You are willing to work an extra hour or dedicate yourself to a particularly challenging project. This is how you stand out from other applicants and employees with your commitment, both in the application process and within your company.
Problem-Solving Skills
Recruiters want to know that you can handle even more critical situations in everyday work. You should be able to identify problems and independently develop solutions for them. Regarding problem-solving skills, be prepared to face such tasks, stay positive, and take responsibility.
Initiative
No one wants to hire someone who constantly needs to be supervised and micromanaged. Demonstrate initiative through independent and efficient work and prove that you will not burden your colleagues but rather relieve them.
How do I Incorporate Soft Skills into my Application Materials?
The good news is that you don’t have to think of all these skills yourself for every application, because they are usually listed in detail in the job advertisement. Companies often list more soft skills in their job advertisements than are actually necessary to ensure that the candidates cover all potential aspects. However, you should not be intimidated by this, because it is enough if you integrate some of the most important soft skills into your application materials.
Make sure you can support these with practical examples from your private context or your previous work experience. A difficult situation in your family environment or a particularly responsible project from your previous job can, for example, serve to illustrate your resilience. In addition to professional examples, you can also draw on situations from your private everyday life. For more detailed tips on using soft skills in your application process, you can use our article on soft skills in application and resume.
In any case, make sure that your hard skills do not outweigh your soft skills, because nowadays most employers place more value on aspects such as teamwork than on more abstract things like grades. Technical knowledge and skills can be learned over time, but a personality suitable for the position is less likely.
We also reveal how you can successfully include your skills in your application in our e-book.
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