Top 5 Skills Employers Look For When Hiring

Do you have what it takes?

The top 5 skills employers look for include:

1. Leadership

2. Communication

3. Problem solving

4. Personal learning

5. Collaboration

Why are these skills so important?

Let’s discuss it in more detail.

Nowadays the world is changing very fast and there are a lot of different skills which can be good to develop. We see a lot of noisy headlines about jobs that will disappear shortly because of robots, AI, or whatever in the news every day. At the same time, there are a lot of trendy jobs in the tech industry which require some particular technical skills. So, it is no surprise that you need to update your skills to be successful. Upskilling should not be viewed as nice to have anymore it has become essential.

The question is what to focus on?

What skills do you need to develop to build a successful career?

And the most important one for a corporate career:

What skills are employers looking for?

From my point of view, it is not only about hard skills. The most in-demand skills today are soft skills.

Why do I think so?

Because technical or hard skills can differ between different areas of the business while some soft skills are crucial for most of the areas and many industries.

I believe that in general employers are looking for the following five soft skills nowadays:

Leadership

The ability of a person to lead, guide or influence others.

There is no organization which can develop, grow, and move forward without leadership. That’s why employers want to hire leaders and value this skill a lot.

Many people do not want to take leadership in any area of their jobs. Most of them think that it is not their job. It is the job of their bosses.

But anyone can take a lead in some project, improvement or something and it does not depend on their position. It is not necessary to have manager/director title to do it.

Actually, people who start to take leadership will become managers/directors sooner or later but surely.

Communication

The ability to understand and be understood by others. It is about expressing your thoughts and ideas clearly and listening and responding to ideas of other people.

This skill is super important and definitely crucial for employers. Because there are many ways to communicate today but still there are a lack of clarity, misunderstanding and we can’t always present our ideas and communicate thoughts effectively.

Do you know how many great ideas are not implemented or even tested just because they were not presented or communicated clearly enough? I am sure the number is huge.

That is why people who can communicate well are always ahead.

Problem solving

It is an ability to achieve goals by overcoming obstacles.

This one is the skill people are paid for. Employers hire people to solve some of their problems which need to be solved to achieve certain results or goals. That is why positions are opened in the first place.

Many people do not want to solve any problem even if they need to.

Become a person who solves problems of any difficulty as fast as possible, and your career will fly to the stars and there will be a queue of employers waiting for you with their job offers.

It’s not easy but the sooner you start to focus on solving real business problems at work the faster it will have a positive impact on your career.

Personal learning

The ability to learn skills and get knowledge through experience or studying during your lifetime.

The progress became much faster, and people’s lives started to be much more dynamic. In a fast-changing environment, personal learning skills have becomemuch more important than ever before. And its importance will continue to grow. This skill will also help to acquire needed hard skills to continue career development through one’s life.

Collaboration

It is an ability to build cooperative and constructive business relationships with other people. And effectively work together.

It is difficult to succeed in any area of life alone. It is always better to have a team. Especially in business where you can achieve much more if you are not alone. Most of the employers already have big teams working for them and it is vitally important to have new hires with highly developed collaborative skills joining the teams.

Conclusion

Thus, I believe that the mentioned five soft skills are crucial for most employers when hiring people. The importance of one or another of these skills can vary depending on an employer but not dramatically.

At the same time, it should be clear that you need to have some particular hard skills for particular jobs but to be successful in a corporate career in general and make the most of it the mentioned soft skills will be needed.