31 Aug You Gotta Have It . . . Skills Every Employee Should Have
When you are reviewing your resume or preparing for an interview, you will likely take inventory of all your experience and accomplishments. But there are some skills every employee should have that you might be undervaluing if you have them (or need to acquire if you don’t). Not all jobs require the same talents, but these are some universal qualities that most employers will value.
Here are skills every employee should have:
Team spirit. Seriously, you need to think for a team, not an individual. These days, it’s more and more common to decide things by committee, to delegate tasks amongst several people, to work across locations with people you can’t see, and other situations that require teamwork.
So, be ready to raise examples in an interview or on a resume of times you had to lead or be part of a team. Name the number of people who had to coordinate, if they were in various locations or on the same site, and what the goals and outcomes were.
Make sure you compute. It’s way, way too late to be a stranger to the digital age. You must have basic computer skills like how to use Microsoft Word, add files to Dropbox or similar cloud storage, and familiarity with major social media like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
This is no longer the playground of young adults for personal reasons, these are fundamental business tools of most companies. These are skills every employee should have because you want to give a future manager confidence that you can keep up with what’s going on and know how to participate on these platforms.
Listen up. Communication skills are undervalued but immediately obvious. If you talk too much, or don’t speak up, both can lead to under confidence. On the other hand, if you don’t seem to listen, but are just waiting for your chance to say more, you can alienate others.
And this extends to more than conversations. Are you solid when it comes to presentations? What about phone etiquette? And do you write coherent, professional, concise emails? Don’t let what you want to say get trumped by how you say it.
Be sensitive. You need to establish early that you enjoy meeting and working with people who can bring different perspectives to an environment.
[bctt tweet=”We live in a diverse world, and employers want teams of different types of people who can work together.” username=””]
And that’s even if they are not from the same background. Be enthusiastic about a multicultural workplace – and mean it.
You can acquire all of the skills every employee should have.
Most of these things you can teach yourself, or even just adjust your own habits and mindset. Ask friends and family for honest feedback on things like your ability to communicate to get a sense of what you need to work on.
Go online and get a free cloud storage account to get comfortable with storing, copying and moving files. Read articles online, sign up for blogs, take free web classes. If you haven’t got it, you can get it. And then take it to the office.
