There is no question that technical skills and experience will help you advance in a career and find a job. They are especially important in fields like engineering and information technology (IT). Personnel departments and recruiters call technical skills and expertise “hard skills.”

However, it is equally important to have certain soft skills to advance your career. “Soft skills” are not as quantifiable as hard skills; they are more like traits or habits of behavior. These are four of the most important soft skills to have.

1. Communication and Interpersonal Skills

At least 50 percent of time in any organization is taken up with communication of one sort or another. You need to send email, go to meetings (in-house and conferences), you need to talk to other members of your team, your supervisor and support staff. Your communication in all these areas has to be clear and easy to understand. 

Interpersonal skills refer to the ability to be pleasant and interact well with other people. That is necessary in any company, no matter how solitary your individual job might be. It is essential to get along well with the people around you.

2. Adaptability

Organizations and nearly everything in them change all the time. Your company may change cities, offices and product focus. Your department may change and merge with another department. Your co-workers might be replaced by other co-workers. What you are working on is almost certainly subject to change. 

As a result, everyone who works for a living needs to be adaptable! You need to be able to go with the flow.

3. Strong Work Ethic

A strong work ethic means you like to see tasks to completion. Many people with a strong work ethic in IT and engineering see their work as fun, and are very committed to it. 

Strong work ethics also come into play with how you work. Punctuality and dependability are a sign of a good work ethic. Being late, loafing around on the job and calling in sick when you are not do not indicate a good work ethic.

4. Project Management

Project management refers to the ability to organize projects both large and small. When you are given a project, do you know how to organize it well? Can you pace yourself to meet deadlines, both interim and final? Do you have good time management? All these are part of project management. 

The better your project management skills, the more productive you will be. Productivity is a highly prized quality in today’s business world.

A Staffing Agency That Works For You

Knowing how to highlight your soft skills as well as your hard skills is crucial to a job search. For more tips on the job search, contact Nesco Resource today.