5 Skills You Must Know To Get A Job
November 11, 2017
EasyUni Staff
But as any true university student knows, the real learning happens not only in the classroom, but as well as outside the classroom: at your hall, the local university bar. And let’s be real, even if you can never bring up that epic wasted moments from final year in an interview, the skills that went into throwing it translate incredibly well to the real world.
Here’s what every employer wants you to learn in university:
(Source: www.pinterest.com)
Billionaire Warren Buffett once told Columbia business students:
“Right now, I’d pay $100,000 for 10 percent of the future earnings of any of you. By having good communication skills, you can improve your value by another 50 percent. If you have good communication skills, see me after this, and I’ll pay you $150,000 for 10 percent of your future earnings.”
The fact of the matter, the power of communication gets you places. It’s why someone with slick game can land a girl way out of his league. This is the type of skill you would develop in the classroom, especially when you’re trying to sweet talk your lecturer to granting an extension on an assignment or bumping up your grade.
No matter who you are, you are being judged everywhere at every time. Imagine, for example, you've just entered a room full of bosses you want to impress. You're feeling pretty good — you're wearing some new clothes and you know that you look suave. But then you couldn’t answer the interview questions. Ouch. You’ve just experienced the brutal reality of impressions.
Of course, giving a presentation in front of a class can grant you some public-speaking practice, but knowing how to present yourself effectively in front of your boss or client is something else entirely. When you morph into the real world, you will then be able sell your thoughts and convince your boss before he or she shoots down your brilliant idea at a meeting. And while you’re doing so, you’ll know how to dodge questions, interruptions, and differences in opinion, all the while keeping your cool and being able to pick up where you left off without skipping a beat.
Be it over a class debate or kissing up to your professors, developing both your verbal and written communication skills — admittedly a very loose term — is a critical accomplishment during your university years.
(Source: usareader.com)
The next skill that you need to have is the ability to work in a team. When you start working, it’s not a one-man show. You can’t get everything done on your own. You’ll have to bump shoulders with people you hardly even know. That guy with the strange looking hair sitting over there? He’s going to be your best friend for as long you remain in your company. In Furious 7, there’s Brian escaping for a precariously perched bus and takes a flying leap to grab onto the spoiler of Letty’s car is exciting to watch in a ‘no way did they just do that” kind of way. How could Brian and Letty pull such heart-pounding act? The answer: The power of teamwork.
In university, teamwork is fostered through experience. You want a good grade? Then learn to work together because you are getting to argue and pit your wit against your opponents with your fellow team members during mock trials. By getting used to this early, you would feel just at home when asked to work with people you’ve just met during your trial period.
In the end, what employers want is a well-oiled machine of a company, which is usually a result of groups of people working together without any hiccups. Be the cog that can fit in that machine.
(Source: hows.vn)
Critical thinking is another essential skill in landing a job. To put it in simple terms, this skill contributed to you staying out of trouble during your university years. Remember the night when you had an exam next day and there was party in the house down the road that you decided not to go? That’s critical thinking; the ability to evaluate a situation and make a sound decision. This skill translates well into the working world especially in areas like business and law. Taking advantage of market trends and finding new ways to annoy the prosecutor/defendant in court are all a result of critical thinking. It’ll also help you preserve your job where you have enough sense (critical thinking!) not to disagree with your boss when he says he thinks an idea is good.
Being a critical thinker, it’s also your job to find solutions to problems. Employers love it when they know that they have someone that they can rely on to deal with problems that they cause, inadvertently or not.
For example, at the University of London International Programmes, critical thinking lies at the heart of exams. There’s no sugarcoating it: exams are dreadful. But hey! That’s how you put your critical thinking skills to test, right? No more gibberish like ‘ace the exam like a memory champ.’ Challenging exam questions lead you to ponder your way through those thorny thickets. If you come out on top, how can you not come out the other side with new eyes? The fact that UOL boasts a 70 percent employment graduate employment rate shows how valuable critical thinking skills are to the employers.
(Source: www.authenticgrowth.com)
Like how predators can smell the fear in their prey, employers can also sense whether you’re a driven person and passionate about your prospective job. The moment you step into the interview room, how you carry yourself tells a lot about whether you’re really interested in the job. Employers look for people who are driven and passionate because they know that people like that will be more likely to give 110% at a job they love compared to someone who couldn’t care less.
Imagine waking up in the morning raring to go because you love your job. You’ll arrive early, perform better and if you have to meet clients, they’ll love you because of how upbeat you are while doing your job. Now imagine waking up and feeling like you’d rather not go to work. Then you arrive late, get told off by your superior and feel like crap and as a result, perform poorly the rest of the day. That’s the difference between being passionate and having drive, and not. Obviously employers prefer the former over the latter.
(Source: www.building.co.uk)
The ability to manage your time and work under pressure when it comes to meeting deadlines is another skill employers want to see in you. We’re sure you remember all too well the ‘deadline weeks’ during your time in university where multiple assignment deadlines were in that week and you’ve yet to get started on them? While it is a bad example of time management, it’s a good example of working under pressure which is valued by employers. However, if you were one of those good students who diligently started work the moment you were assigned a piece of work, and by the time ‘deadline week’ came around you were already done with all of them, then congratulations, you have stellar time management skills.
Employers usually look for people with a combination of both skills. Translating those into the workplace, you should be able to juggle those tight deadlines with a brutal amount of tasks simultaneously without breaking a sweat.
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