Oluwasegun Esan is a 12th grade student at People’s Prep Charter School. He is currently an intern for Schools That Can Newark.
For my next post, I wanted to write about career skills, and how developing these skills can play a role in someone’s future career or job. Having knowledge about career skills can give you the opportunity to earn a job or an internship. As a student who has practiced a good amount of skills on this list, these skills have helped me have great relationships with my supervisors both at my current internship at Schools That Can and my last one at University Hospital.
Here’s the breakdown of important career skills:
Communication skills: In our first blog post, we talked about communication skills playing a big role for students in internships, because of building connections with your supervisors and making sure there is clarity around tasks.
According to Indeed, there are a couple ways you can practice communication skills. Practicing eye contact makes you a better communicator because it helps with improving your communication skills, and sharpens your public speaking skills, making you a better communicator because you are making a bond with the person you are speaking to.
“Through eye contact, you can turn passive audience members into active participants in your speech or presentation, increasing the likelihood they’ll retain some information or perform the action that you’re requesting,” according to Indeed.
Asking questions and listening to what your interviewer or who you are talking to gives them a sign that you are interested in what they have to say. Practicing active listening and nonverbal communication are very important factors that play a role when communicating with different people.
Without communication skills, you might lower your chance of getting accepted at a job, or getting accepted to a college. Based on what the interviewer sees in your communication skills, they might make a change in their decision about your admission or opportunity.
Having great communication skills sets you up for the future in ways you can’t think of. It can be the main reason why you or someone was picked for a job because of the way they interact and communicate with others. Focusing on building your communication skills, in not just speaking but writing, can be very important.
Collaboration skills: This is a very important skill that everyone should have, because everyone in the world is different and we don’t have any other option than to collaborate–it’s one of the things that help make work easier.
Being able to collaborate with others allows you to learn from them, and for them to learn from you. We learn on a daily basis from others, so being able to collaborate with others not only allows you to learn from them but also allows you to build social skills and a new relationship with who you are working with. Being able to talk to your coworkers allows for everything to go smoothly. It builds trust with who you are working with because, without the trust and the communication, there wouldn’t be effective collaboration.
According to NUITE, collaboration also connects to collaborative learning. It helps build trust, engage in learning, and gain confidence. “In order to solve a project’s given problem, children need to communicate,” according to NUITE.
Self-Management Skills: This would be one of, if not the, best skill you could learn because it boost’s different parts of who you are. Time efficiency and understanding balance play big roles in if you get accepted into an internship, how you manage classes, and jobs once you get into college.
To efficiently manage your time, you need to know when you are wasting your time, and being able to set a time table for yourself–prioritizing work that is important and being able to delegate the tasks that you can work on later.
Saying no to multitasking, in some cases, makes your work go by faster. Knowing when to prioritize things and work around your schedule and time that you have is really important. According to Exploring Your Mind, “prioritize; then, prioritize, and finally prioritize. Identify what are your main objectives and truly focus on them.” Creating a daily schedule and setting daily goals can help.
Professional Skills: Having professional skills is like having one leg up for jobs–professional skills are things that are not taught to the maximum. That’s why having work-based learning experiences, which I wrote about in my last blog post, are very important.
Professional skills build your knowledge and confidence. They help you know how to succeed in your workplace. Having real-world work skills help you be able to learn new things quickly, be flexible, and increase confidence.
These are skills that jobs look for in future employees. and this can play a role in why either you or someone else got employed. Taking your time to build these skills, and to gain experience with work-based learning, would be nothing but good.