What Are the Key Skills You Need to be Employable in Today's Competitive Marketplace?
Must-have qualities for a thriving career in the global professional sphere
Over time, the requirements and personal specifications for new job roles adapt in line with changes in the working world. The skills that were highly valued 20, 10, or even five years ago have evolved, and now employers are looking for something new. If you’re applying for jobs, this can make it difficult to identify which skills employers are looking for and how to make yourself stand out from the other applicants.
In recent years, the workplace has become more virtual, making use of online tools for anything from communication to designing and sharing an agency contract template. For new hires to integrate with their new business effectively, they already need some of the skills in place to flourish in the virtual workplace as well as any physical offices. Employers will be looking for these skills in your applications to assess how employable you are.
What Types of Skills Do You Need to Be Employable?
Remote Skills
Working remotely requires a different set of skills to working in an office alongside the rest of your team. As many businesses now adopt hybrid models of work, you may have to work remotely from your own accommodation, and, to get the job, you need to prove that you can. These skills show you can still be an effective part of the team from wherever you work, being able to manage yourself and still meet deadlines without so much supervision from senior team members.
IT Skills
Having basic IT literacy has become essential to the modern workplace, as new employees need to use intuitive interfaces and applications regardless of their role. Going beyond this and demonstrating that you have more specialized IT skills, whether in coding or previous experience with business communications software, can help you stand out from other applicants. Likewise, potential employers will value not having to spend time training you with it.
Soft Skills
These more general desirable characteristics of an employable person have been important for a while when looking for a job and for good reason. Soft skills tend to be useful regardless of the job role, showing your competency in managing your workload and delivering what’s expected of you. As such, they’re transferable between different roles, helping applicants to make career changes and present their existing skills in a way that’s relevant to the job requirements.
What Are the Key Skills for Today’s Competitive Marketplace?
Independence
Whether you’re working remotely or within a department office, you need to have the skills to motivate yourself and complete the tasks expected of you. Although you may work with others on projects, you shouldn’t rely on them to remind you of deadlines or micromanage your responsibilities. Independence is an employability skill shown in any task or project you’ve completed without help, as well as areas where you’ve taken initiative or shown leadership.
Asynchronous Communication
Particularly when working in a remote or hybrid team, asynchronous communication allows for the group to individually progress on a project without all working together constantly. A large part of this comes down to effective communication and giving others the information and resources they need to continue the project without having to ask you additional questions. This improves the workflow of your remote team and reduces delays throughout processes.
Virtual Collaboration
How you collaborate online looks different from how you might do it in person. Using video calls and screen sharing is one way of working with other members of your team and may be useful in some cases. Similarly, having experience in enterprise-wide collaboration through virtual messages and file sharing shows a level of organization and flexibility to work with others. Being able to explain this in your applications shows your ability to collaborate from anywhere.
Software Experience
Some roles may rely on specific software, and showing you can use these already means there’ll be less training necessary to integrate you into the role. Even if you don’t have direct experience with the software they use, experience with similar software can still be useful. Additionally, being aware of how to use other virtual tools shows your ability to work with IT. This is crucial for any role, as showing intuition in using IT is going to be helpful with new software.
Problem-solving
Whatever role you’re in, eventually you will face problems in your projects and workflow. Being ready to find solutions makes you a more effective member of the team, working to minimize the issue and still reach your targets. Problem-solving skills are particularly useful in customer service roles or professional development, assessing the available options to find a way forward. Nonetheless, the experience of facing and overcoming challenges is useful in any position.
Self-improvement
There’s no limit to the skills a person can have or the characteristics they can build. Continually reviewing your work practices and finding ways to make these more efficient or productive can highlight new skills to develop. This shows an ability to reflect and review, as well as put plans into action to aim for better goals, reaching your full potential as the best employee you can be. Self-improvement skills also demonstrate motivation and a desire to progress in your career.
What Key Skills Do You Have?
As you go through the different skills mentioned above, you may recognize some of these in yourself. Make sure to emphasize these in your job applications, showing examples of you using these skills in your previous roles. You may think of similar skills that also fit into the remote or IT skills categories — these can be valuable too, helping your application to stand out from others when employers look through them.
If you don’t already have these skills, now is the time to start building them. Find online courses to fill your skills gaps or look for experiences where these skills are used. It’s also worth looking at the person specifications for job roles you’re interested in and picking out the skills they include. Building these can tailor your experience to the role and increase your suitability as a candidate, making you the perfect person for the job.
Grace Lau is the director of growth content at Dialpad, a secure video conferencing app and AI-powered cloud communication platform for better and easier team collaboration. She has also written for Startups Magazine and MultiBriefs.