Career Advice

8 Essential Skills Employers Look For: Your Path to Success

career skills

If you’re planning to move your career forward next year, there are plenty of skills that you need to develop. Employers in Brighton are looking beyond the traditional graduate and other qualifications nowadays, perhaps more than ever before.

Here are our top 8 highly transferable skills that really make a difference and which you might like to develop in 2019 to improve your chances of success in finding a job in Brighton:

1. Communication

We all know it’s important but how many of us are really good at it? You need to be clear, concise and engaging whether you are producing written material or talking face to face with a customer. If your communication skills have room for improvement, it’s time you worked on them.

2. The Art of the Deal

While he may not be everyone’s cup of tea, Trump’s much vaunted ‘Art of the Deal’ is important. Everything in your career is a negotiation. You don’t have to read his book (in fact we advise you not to) but there’s plenty of information online and courses that help you develop your negotiation skills.

3. Business Sense

One of the things that many businesses complain about graduates or school leavers is their lack of commercial understanding. If you really want to impress at your next interview, try learning what it takes to run a business – to succeed you need to understand where the organisation you’re applying to fits in the world. An entrepreneurial state of mind is important now more than ever.

4. Working in a Team

It may not sound like a skill but it is. Most people used to add somewhere on their CV that they were good at working on their own or as a member of a team. But working with other people can often be difficult and stressful. Learning how to build positive relationships at work and understanding team dynamics is important.

5. Solving Problems

Most businesses nowadays want employees who can operate under their own initiative or come up with solutions to daily problems. If you want to get into management or boost your career chances, better problem solving is definitely a key skill to develop.

6. Organisational Skills

In addition, to solve any problem you need to have the right organisational skills whether you’re getting an urgent task done for the boss or undertaking a major change in your office. Do you understand time and project management intimately? Now might be the time to find out what it means.

7. Motivation and Working Under Pressure

Again, these might not seem like skills you can learn, but they are. Coping with the stress at work can come from experience and putting yourself in high pressure situations. Motivation can be developed and boosted by making sure that your goals are achievable. All of these can mean you’re calm under pressure and someone employers can depend on to get the job done.

8. Confidence and How to Get It

Another skill that is greatly appreciated in the work environment is confidence. It’s something that comes with success and achieving what you need to do. Can you develop confidence for jobs that you’ve no experience of? Of course you can. And, if you walk into an interview with confidence, it may well mean the difference between success and failure.

Not all the above are easy to achieve. But developing these key personal skills can certainly enhance how you appear to potential employers and enhance your future job prospects. Take some time out to work on these aspects of your character and you won’t be disappointed. It could be the start of a whole new and bright future, and land you a new job in Brighton and Hove.