5 Skills Employers Want — Whether You Realize It Or Not

Whether you just graduated from college or are looking to change your career path, your résumé needs to include the basics: your educational background, your experience, your achievements. But if you really want to stand out, you have to highlight your soft skills among all your activities and honors.

The reason? It shows that you have abilities that can be applied to any role. Even better, these are skills that you clearly strengthened on your own, by applying feedback or simple trial and error.

But which skills deserve a spot on your résumé? From my personal experience, my talks with other leaders, and some research, I can confidently say these are the five skills that employers are looking for — but you may never have considered listing on your résumé.

1. Critical-Thinking/Problem-Solving Abilities

Without problem-solving skills or critical thinking, an organization can’t function properly. After all, these skills allow employees to develop fresh ideas and solutions so they can overcome an obstacle or implement a new business strategy.

What’s more, as technology is increasingly embraced, there’s a strong need for people to apply logic and reason to tech — such as artificial intelligence and machine learning — to ensure it’s used correctly.

Activities to list: Strategic games, such as chess, can boost IQ, enhance problem-solving skills, increase concentration, fuel planning and foresight, and develop both sides of the brain.

Besides chess, Texas Hold‘Em enhances math skills, decision-making abilities, and one’s ability to deal with stress and emotions. Even strategic video games have cognitive benefits, such as improving executive function, reducing impulsivity, and increasing mental flexibility.

1. Time Management

If you can’t properly manage your time, you’ll constantly fall behind on projects. In a recent article on Linkedin, I wrote about how when we started Calendar I started encouraging employees to schedule out every minute of the day. Read the article before you think I’m crazy, but I’ve found the best employees are very cautious of their time.

As if that weren’t enough, bad time management can create a toxic work environment. Just think about how you’ll be viewed if you’re the person responsible for holding your team back by blowing a deadline.

Activities to list: There’s no one way to improve your time management. But learning how to prioritize tasks, focus on one thing at time, plan, and become more organized are all excellent places to start. Hobbies like traveling, cooking, or running can help highlight your time management skills and ability to gauge progress toward an end goal.

With traveling, if you don’t plan carefully, you’ll have extended layovers or missed connections. And even the best marathon runner won’t be ready to run 26.2 miles if he hasn’t put in the time to consistently increase the length of his runs over the months prior.

However, fluency in a second language or talent on the guitar can signal great time management, too: It shows you’ve been able to carve out time to not only attend class or hold down a job, but also perfect a talent.

1. Thinking Different And Being Creative

According to “The Future of Jobs Report 2018” from World Economic Forum, creativity was listed as one of the three skills employers are looking for. And for good reason: Organizations need people who can brainstorm and generate innovative ideas and combine those with emerging technology to create new products and services.

Activities to list: Having a background in the arts can reflect a creative mind, such as playing a musical instrument, writing, taking photographs, sculpting, or painting. Research has shown that being involved with the arts recruits both sides of your brain to boost creativity and reduces the time it takes to learn new tasks.

What’s more, having a background in the arts reduces errors, improves your memory, and relieves stress. An artistic bent shows you pay attention to details — your work wouldn’t be high-quality or reflective of your style if you haphazardly threw it together.

1. Emotional Intelligence

If I could only recommend workers develop one skill, it would be emotional intelligence.

EI is key to developing and maintaining healthy interpersonal relationships with colleagues and customers. EI strengthens communication skills, helps us empathize with others, and regulates our emotions. It also helps us develop self-awareness so we understand our strengths and weaknesses and stay motivated.

If you want to work your way to a leadership position, EI is absolutely necessary because it helps build rapport and trust with team members. It will also help you keep everyone focused on achieving the same goal by communicating how their work aligns with the big picture.

Activities to list: The best part of emotional intelligence is that it can be developed through a wide variety of outlets: meditation, yoga, reading, acting, improv comedy, volunteering. As an added perk, volunteering demonstrates leadership and project management skills — it shows you’re the type of person who sees a project through. Donating your time can also sharpen your communication and collaboration skills.

1. Culture Fit/Personality

Most companies aren’t looking for a nameless, faceless individual to simply fill a seat. They want someone who’s intelligent, hard-working, and passionate. This ensures the hire can bring new ideas and perspectives to the table, collaborate with others, and remain loyal to the organization’s goals and values.

Activities to list: Group sports — basketball, soccer, even dodgeball — prove that you can work in the pursuit of a common goal. Also, participating in a club or nonprofit demonstrates that you can effectively communicate and collaborate with groups of people. This could be a club related to your industry, the local chamber of commerce, or a food bank. These activities also highlight the passions and interests that may align with employers’.

When polishing your résumé, don’t hesitate to show off your hobbies and interests. Employers won’t see them as a waste of time; they’ll see the essential traits they want all employees to possess. Hard skills can often be taught, but self-taught soft skills are unexpected clinchers.