It is common for students to begin considering career options during their first term of university. When you envision your career path, you can utilise your university years to gain an advantage. Even students who are unsure of what they wish to pursue in the future can develop valuable skills that prove to be useful, regardless of their career objective.
Developing these soft skills is essential for all professions and gives you an edge over less experienced applicants with whom you will soon be competing. Here are the top ten soft skills each university student should develop to succeed in their future careers. Let’s take a closer look at each of them.
How do You Define Soft Skills?
Defining soft skills and how they differ from hard skills will help you understand the specific skills you’ll need when you begin looking for work.
In general, soft skills are those skills that are not technical or related to a specific occupation but are nevertheless essential for most jobs. Rather, they are based on how you manage difficulties, deal with co-workers, and demonstrate a high level of work ethic.
Unlike soft skills, hard skills are specialised skills related to a particular profession. An example would be the ability to analyse data, develop language proficiency, or perform research and writing. Depending on your job, you might need hard skills like writing academic papers, proofreading, creating content, etc.
10 Important Soft Skills Every Student Must Learn
Now, let’s examine 10 important soft skills that students should perfect and learn while in university. Developing these skills is essential to creating a professional impression and ensuring that you will be able to adapt to any work environment.
1. Communicating
Great communication is a key soft skill that is needed in any career path. Any individual seeking a job or seeking to succeed in a professional setting must possess excellent communication skills.
As a result, students should strive to enhance communication abilities, including:
- Communication by speech or verbal means
- The ability to listen actively
- Communication in writing
- Using body language to communicate non-verbally
Using these various communication techniques can help you land a job, network, impress people, ace an interview, and blend in on your team. You can practice improving your communication capabilities in all kinds of ways through university. Here are a few options:
- Participating in debates
- Taking part in oral presentations
- Facilitating writing workshops
- Learning how to speak in public
- Studying body language
2. Time Management
Developing this skill is an activity that all of us must practice, not only at the workplace but in our daily lives as well. Managing your time wisely will enable you to take advantage of each day and achieve your goals with ease.
To stay organised and on top of exams, assignments, and due dates, students need to have good time management skills. Here are a few ground rules you should follow if you struggle with time management:
- Decide what you want to accomplish each day or week
- Organise them by priority
- Keep a record of everything on a calendar
- Develop the ability to estimate time
- Be respectful of your schedule
Additionally, students should be taught the importance of staying productive. Unfortunately, most of them procrastinate, scroll on social media, and are easily distracted.
3. Being Creative
All workplaces appreciate creative thinking, innovative thinking, and the desire to make a positive difference. There will be a desire on the part of your future company to see that you contribute and go above and beyond the official request.
A university environment is ideal for practicing creativity and developing your ability to communicate and utilise ideas effectively.
As a starting point, consider these options:
- Participate in activities of student groups and organizations
- Studying creatively
- Taking part in creative workshops
- Getting to know other creative classmates
Contribute boldly to creative team projects by finding creative activities that you enjoy. A good creativity example includes learning graphic design and making unique and catchy logos and related designs using your creativity. Further, you can also get help from an online logo maker tool to learn what the best logos and design consist of and how you can do that on your own.
4. Working Together/ Teamwork
There is no doubt that collaboration and teamwork are significant in every industry and workplace. Working together and contributing seems very rewarding, so students should take advantage of this opportunity.
Collaboration requires treating others with respect and allowing others to treat you with respect. Here is how to contribute towards teamwork:
- Be attentive to what you hear
- Communicate clearly
- Respectfully express your opinions
- Adaptability is essential
- Be supportive of one another
- Empathise with others
If you play your part, you can teach the other team something as well.
5. Solving Problems
In the opinion of some students, solving a problem is either something you can do or you don’t. However, this is not the case. The purpose of problem-solving abilities is to assist us in finding solutions to situations that may present themselves.
A problem-solver must be able to:
- Consider all aspects of a problem
- Describe the problem in detail
- Think of several possible solutions and brainstorm them
- Decide which is the best
- Consider finding a method for gradually breaking down a problem and finding the best solution, as opposed to giving up.
6. Thinking Critically
A critical thinker is capable of analysing facts to conclude. In addition to problem-solving, critical thinking encompasses the following key elements:
- Analysing and conducting research
- Analysing all possible outcomes and options
- Risk management and reward mitigation
To promote growth and improve company-wide operations, employers seek candidates with this skill to make important decisions and solve complicated problems.
7. Having a Positive Attitude
It is important to stay optimistic and cheerful at work, regardless of the task at hand. Positive attitudes are correlated with a greater drive to work, a greater sense of self-motivation, and the ability to interact effectively with others. Moreover, they can maintain a positive attitude despite challenging situations by looking for opportunities. Companies need to retain resilient and motivated employees since they are instrumental in improving the morale of the entire team or organisation; they can also contribute to the development of company culture and value systems.
8. Emotional Intelligence
Do you have a clear understanding of how your emotions feel? The question is, how do you recognise, manage, and process them most appropriately? You act largely based on your emotions, affecting your personality and how you interact with other people.
Being emotionally intelligent will enable you to gain self-awareness, confidence, and the ability to empathize with others. Furthermore, it will benefit your mental health, relieve stress, and help you maintain control over your emotions.
9. Managing Stress
It is common knowledge that students will face stress from time to time, but not every student is capable of managing it. Students often find it challenging to remain organised and productive and achieve goals during stressful times.
The importance of stress management to university students and graduates cannot be overstated. The following are some strategies for managing stress:
- Setting realistic goals
- Identifying the stress triggers in your life
- Techniques for relieving stress
Managing stress requires active effort and learning how to channel it appropriately.
10. Adaptability
Would you consider yourself to be one of those individuals unable to see other possibilities in which a situation could unfold? Is it difficult for you to accept that sometimes things simply do not turn out as you had hoped?
It will be very difficult for you to integrate with a team of professionals if you are not flexible. Managing your goals regardless of changing circumstances means remaining flexible at work, adapting as circumstances change, and keeping track of your progress.
Conclusion
A university education can be a great opportunity for developing important soft skills. Your only responsibility is to recognize that these skills are important and take part in activities that will enhance them.
While still in school, you can use the top 10 skills listed above as your guide for taking your first career steps. The more confident you are after graduation, the easier it will be for you to find employment and become the person you want to be.
Featured image by William Fortunato from Pexels
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