6 Indispensable Skills You Need As A Student Looking For Employment

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As a student, you are constantly thinking about the future and what it may hold in terms of employment and finding a career you enjoy.

The secret is, regardless of what you study, there are important traits you must possess to secure any form of employment.

Without them, you may struggle to find work in a field even if it’s the one you studied for!

5 Skills you need for employment

These are 5 important skills you should possess/be mindful of if you want to find employment immediately after your studies.

The good news is even if you are looking for roles outside your sphere of expertise, you are likely to achieve some success if you master a couple of these.

While experience is important for roles generally, employers are surprisingly forgiving towards graduates looking to secure their first job.

Having traits such as resilience, adaptability, and delusional confidence may even be more significant than on-the-job experience,

since this makes you an asset to your team in terms of filling any gaps that experience may not cover.

Resilience, you need to try again

Resilience is generally a favourable trait to possess as things aren’t always going to be straightforward.

Resilience provides you with the necessary motivation to repeat an action that previously resulted in a disappointing outcome.

This is clearly an important skill to possess since job searches and failed interviews can be one of the most demoralising aspects of leaving university and choosing a career path.

It’s not easy – and many people struggle deeply with finding any job let alone their dream job.

Resilience provides a framework where the negative result of an action is itself a necessary part of the process, rather than a definitive response to your goals.

Imagine if you got everything you wanted first time? You’d either have to be a robot, or the lowest skilled person ever.

Roadblocks are what make you re-evaluate your strategy, gain feedback, and improve your skills for the next thing.

This is why even if you are unprepared for your interviews, you should still attend them anyways!

You may embarrass yourself supremely, but you will definitely learn something new.

Able to accept criticisms

If you are able to accept criticism, you are more likely to improve, and therefore more likely to secure a job sooner.

Whenever you attend a job interview, you should ask why you got the role, or why you were unsuccessful.

Interviewers are generally open to providing feedback especially if you were a good contender for the role.

Even if you never made it to the interview stage, it is always worth emailing about what skills you were lacking, what exactly they were looking for etc.

It is very easy to secure your dream job so long as you’re willing to accept criticism, and then direct your skillset towards what employers want.

You may also want to be self-employed – and in that case criticism from business mentors still applies!

Adapt and be ready for something new

Adapting can mean different things in different situations.

Generally, being fluid in the execution of plans and willing to change direction depending on what is most favourable is a good skill to possess.

In the context of finding employment after graduation, adaptability can help you apply to roles that you wouldn’t otherwise apply to.

For instance, job opportunities directly relating to certain degrees are limited, so you may decide to pivot slightly and apply to closely related jobs.

This is an example of adaptability.

Another good example is job-specific training – in the current day and age you can find training programs for almost any job online.

A lot of online roles especially in the IT sector may only require online certification to be eligible for employment.

The idea is you shouldn’t limit yourself to what you know, but expand your horizons to what you don’t.

Practice your pitch

Selling yourself is potentially the most important skill you will ever learn in life.

That and appearance!

Practising your pitch is all about pinpointing all your selling points.

Practice explaining why anyone should give you an opportunity.

List all the skills you have and explain why they are assets to a given team.

Think of situations when you have demonstrated these skills.

Exercise positive thinking

One of the most important habits to develop for personal growth and success is to exercise positive thinking.

This means that instead of dwelling on negative thoughts and situations, we intentionally focus our minds on the good in our lives and on solutions.

Positive thinking can help reduce stress, increase our resilience, and improve job search outcomes.

It also leads to a more optimistic attitude, which can attract success and happiness into our lives.

By consciously cultivating positive thoughts and attitudes, we can create a brighter future for ourselves and those around us.

Be slightly delusional

Delusion, while often looked at as a negative trait is a helpful mindset when facing challenges, as it allows us to see possibilities where others may see only obstacles.

It may even encourage you to go for job opportunities well out of your comfort zone/ area of expertise.

This doesn’t always work out however if you never try, you’ll likely never know.

Summary

To summarise traits needed to find work after graduating, one needs to be adaptable, persistent, somewhat delusional and have strong communication skills.

Additionally, having a positive attitude, being proactive, and being able to network effectively can also greatly increase one’s chances of success in the job search.

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