Five Skills You’ll Rarely See In Job Postings (But Definitely Need)
Employers are terrible at saying what’s actually needed to succeed in a
given role, but these soft skills usually are.
The skills you need to land an in-demand job right now
might not be so different from the ones that will keep you employable
in the future.
As ZipRecruiter cofounder and CEO Ian Siegel points out, there’s a
huge demand for traditional jobs–ranging from construction work to data
science–right now, but there’s also a growing need to fill futuristic-sounding
jobs like these:
- Ethical
self-driving car hacker
- Robotic medicine
- 3D
hologram producer
- Drone pilot
instructor
- 3D-printed
footwear designer
- Private
spaceflight mission manager
For job seekers, it’s hard enough to know how to position yourself
for the existing positions, let alone plan for emerging ones. But what
seems pretty clear across the board is that employers value so-called
“soft skills” today and are likely to do so tomorrow.
While nearly half of
U.S. jobs could be affected by automation in the
coming years, nearly a third of workers think it will actually make their
jobs better, according to new Randstad research. That means it’s worth thinking
strategically about what robots can’t do well–like
interpersonal communication– which a full 89% of
executives say is difficult to find when hiring.
Heck, even astronauts need
emotional intelligence.
With that in mind, Fast Company talked to job
experts about which skills you need to develop right now in
order to grow your career in the future–even if most job postings
never actually say so.
This skill has applications in a variety of industries, according
to Scott Dobroski at Glassdoor. While a job description for a creative manager,
for instance, will specifically call for a person who can tell “compelling
stories across [social] channels” and appeal to customers through emotion and
reason, most others won’t.
However, Dobroski points out that in jobs like IT, where “you’ve
got to service every department in your organization,” it’s essential to know
how to figure out what everyone needs, then build all that into a solid
argument that gets leaders to invest in crucial tech updates. In data science,
too, says Dobroski, data visualization requires a certain amount of
storytelling–for instance, in converting the analysis to a presentation for
that execs and non-technical employees can grasp.
Jim Curtis, president of Remedy Health Media, says you can
showcase storytelling skills right on your resume. Maybe you’d ordinarily
write how you achieved “20x customer acquisition and “75%
year-over-year customer retention.” While that’s impressive, why not add
bit of drama? Curtis suggests mentioning you did this while a competitor was on
your heels, or at a time when you were one of the company’s first hires.
“Take the prospective employer on the journey with you,” he advises, “to create
a multidimensional portrait ahead of meeting with the interviewer.”
2. COLLABORATION
Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) found that job
growth last month was led by
the addition of nearly 5,000 positions in IT, software services, and
computer system design.
CEO Todd Thibodeaux says CompTIA’s analysis of job-posting
data finds that despite demand for technical expertise, employers are
looking for good verbal and written communication, problem solving, business
intelligence, project management, and teamwork skills. He says that’s because
tech professionals are no longer relegated to the back office or the server
room.
But that can create some challenges. The more IT managers
earn front-row seats in decision-making means they’ll also need
to tap soft skills like teamwork, he says. They, like other workers, “are
a part of a bigger project involving cross-functional teams that must interact
and work together for the project to succeed,” Thibodeaux explains. So on the
next resume or cover letter you write, make sure you pair those technical
talents of yours with examples of ways you’ve deployed them collaboratively.
3. PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Elaine Varelas, managing partner of Keystone Partners, agrees.
You’ll definitely see “project management” listed in jobs for (you guessed it)
project managers, but it may be absent from many other openings where it’s
crucial. Varelas says this skill goes hand in hand with collaboration; in
her view, they top the list of soft skills that Keystone researchers have found
workers need most–across industries, both now and in the future.
“Team-based projects need team leaders who can keep the project
moving, track the components, keep everyone on task,” she observes.
Workers with project-management skills bring multiple initiatives in line
with each other while planning for every contingency. Beyond just juggling all
those elements, Varelas says, “Motivating participants to excel in order to
achieve the best possible outcomes is indeed greater than the sum of its
parts.”
4. CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Varelas’s colleague, Jayne Mattson, senior vice president
at Keystone Associates, has encountered some candidates who
lack conflict-resolution skills. This typically happens
in face-to-face interactions where emotional intelligence is required
to pick up on what somebody else’s body language and other nonverbal cues might
be saying.
But this plays out in other, sometimes preemptive ways, she says,
like “the courtesy of acknowledging receipt of emails or other forms of communication.”
Here, too, Mattson adds, it’s important to be able to “articulate thoughts
and feelings about a situation in a respectful way versus ‘telling it like it
is.'” If you can’t do that well–whether in person or digitally–you’re likely to
stir up confrontations.
5. MANAGING PEOPLE
This is a more nuanced skill than you might think, and while many
job postings are flagged as managerial roles, they might not always emphasize
how essential good people management really is. What’s more, this job skill
isn’t just crucial when you’re moving up the ranks in a corporation–it’s also
useful if you decide to strike out on your own. As ZipRecruiter’s Siegel notes,
thanks to the gig economy, the rapid rise of independent workers, and the ease
of starting their own businesses, “We’re experiencing a wave of
entrepreneurship the likes of which society has never seen.”
So hard skills, like learning to read a balance sheet and profit
and loss statements, won’t always cut it; you’ll also need to direct your own
employees or work effectively with clients and customers. “I don’t know that
there’s a class you can take to learn empathy, perspective, and patience,” says
Siegel–it just takes practice. “If you haven’t worked for others, it is hard to
be good at managing,” he points out–adding that he believes it takes at least
three years’ reporting to somebody else before most employees should even be
considered for management roles themselves.
Just because employers focus largely on technical skills and
industry expertise in job postings doesn’t mean that’s all that’s required.
“The reality is that employers are terrible at saying what is important to
success on the job,” says Siegel, “Few people say you must be a good listener,”
he says, or be able to help your coworkers collaborate. But those skills have
never been more important–not just to your current career but to your
future one, too.
BY LYDIA DISHMAN
https://www.fastcompany.com/40444120/five-skills-youll-rarely-see-in-job-postings-but-definitely-need?utm_source=postup&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Fast%20Company%20Daily&position=9&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=07282017
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