What Skills Should I Enhance for A Successful Career?

Skill enhancement is an important part of your career, whether it's to move up in your company, change industries or find new jobs. Continuous skill enhancement can help you improve personally and in your career, and in today's online world, it is becoming increasingly easy to achieve a new skill. Skill enhancement can also help you to adapt and thrive in ever changing career environments, as companies become influenced by the economic, industrial, technological and hiring trends.

Skill enhancement involves looking for ways to gain new skills, capabilities and competencies which can help you perform better in your current job, or to progress to a new role. Skill enhancement can involve developing hard skills, such as a new software, analytics methods, or technical understanding, but it can also involve developing soft skills such as public speaking, communication, and team management.

Skill enhancement could seem unnecessary or laborious, especially if your current job is time consuming. However, real career moves are made when an employee can constantly adapt to the environment of their industry. So, here are some reasons why skill enhancement can’t be overlooked:

Career Advancement

The main reason people look to enhance their skills is to move up in their career. Higher-paying and senior-level roles require people with the experience and skills to take on the duties of the role. One of the easiest ways to receive a higher salary is to become the ideal candidate for the role – you will have a competitive edge over other candidates, and you could gain the ability to negotiate for a higher salary. Some of the technical expertise required by these roles is not always learnt on the job, and therefore taking the initiative of learning new skills will allow you to become qualified for the role. 

Aside from hard skills, high-paying roles usually involve management, which requires highly developed soft skills, too. Soft skills for higher level roles involve managing teams, communication, decision-making and negotiation. Soft skills need to be developed over time, as opportunities to use them might be rare. Demonstrating your developed hard and soft skills over a period of time, and achieving results by using them will allow you to receive promotions or become qualified for other jobs. 

Adaptability

Constant enhancement of skills means constant learning, which helps build adaptability in the long run. Being adaptable is a highly sought after trait, as many people become comfortable with their jobs, and tend to not be motivated to upskill. Adaptability can help you develop resilience, patience and the ability to cope with stress, which managers will appreciate.

Technology, finance and communications are constantly changing and adapting to trends, so upskilling in these industries is important. Having a diverse skill set and the ability to learn will make you a resilient and highly valuable employee. 

Job Security

Skill enhancement throughout your career means that you can easily change careers or find a new job whenever necessary. Having the mindset of constantly learning and a wide array of skills means that you can maintain employment easily, especially if your industry experiences changes often. Upskilling means you are constantly on the forefront of new trends, skills and capabilities, which employers will seek in their candidates.

Personal Growth

Skill enhancement can not only help you in your career, but it can help you develop personally as well. Learning new skills can bring new perspectives, insights and challenges which can help you build patience, respect and humility. Personal development is an overlooked part of career and skill enhancement, as many people believe that they should not mix their personal and work lives together. However, striving for personal growth can be advantageous to both your career and personal life, as it can assist you in becoming a more well-rounded employee and person.

As well as being a better employee, skill enhancement can give you more confidence in yourself – learning a new skill successfully can bring great satisfaction. By gaining confidence, you can become more confident in your job, when it comes to sharing ideas, collaborating or leading others.

Now that we’ve gone through the concept of skill enhancement, let’s go through skills which you can begin working on to help you develop in your career: 

Technical Skills

Technical skills involve learning and adapting to new technologies.

These technical skills are important to learn as companies want to become more streamlined and efficient. Many companies do not hold training sessions for new hard skills, but rather look to hire people who are already proficient in them. Improving skills with technology and software in general will allow you to easily adapt to changes, and become more independent and productive in your work.

Soft Skills

Soft skills are non-technical skills which do not involve learning new technology. Soft skills require development over a longer period of time, as the opportunities to use new soft skills depends on your role or industry. Regardless, anyone striving for a management or upper level role will need to develop and enhance their soft skills, as they will be used daily by managers.

Some of these skills seem very obvious or common sense. However, developing skills in handling diverse groups of people, as well as handling teams across multiple levels and departments, requires some lateral thinking, which can be taught through courses. It’s important to have an open mind if you decide you want to improve your soft skills; being cynical won’t allow you to learn anything.

Digital Literacy

Enhancing skills in digital literacy is different from technical skill improvement as becoming digitally literate involves becoming more familiar and comfortable with technology in general. Becoming digitally literate means that you can adapt to learning technical skills when they arise. In an increasingly digital world, being digitally literate is essential to progressing in your career.

Digital literacy is especially important for consultants or jobs which are heavily client facing; as being digitally literate means you can handle situations where you have to set up or use unfamiliar technology. Likewise, becoming familiar with the vocabulary used by engineers, finance and analytical professionals is another way you can improve digital literacy. Some industries and professions have specific ways they communicate; understanding this will help you immensely in your career.

Language Skills

Enhancing skills through learning a new language is not usually the first option for most people, but can be incredibly valuable in your career. If you work for an international company, or want to pursue business or consulting, learning another language can help you to progress in your career, as clients in these industries will be from all around the world.

Leadership and Management Skills

Leadership and management skills are slightly different from regular soft skills as they require specific training to be developed. Good leaders and managers are important for employee satisfaction, and help with productivity and reaching goals.

Skill enhancement for leaders involves developing technical, interpersonal and leadership skills, as well as other personal qualities such as optimism and empathy. These skills need to be learned over time, and to get promoted into a management role, you need to demonstrate that you can effectively use them in your work. You can read more on how to be a good leader here.

If you know which areas you would like to improve your skills, you can begin making a plan on how you will achieve them. To help you get started, here are our 3 steps for skill improvement:

1. Set Clear and Achievable Goals

Define specific goals about the skill you want to improve and set out steps to achieving it. Set milestones for your goal – for example, if you want to learn photoshop for your job, your first step could be downloading the program and watching tutorials. Setting out specific goals can show you the pathway you need to take in order to achieve a new skill. This can help keep you motivated, and avoid putting stress on yourself to master a new skill in a short period of time.

2. Diversify Your Learning Methods

To keep the process of improving your skills interesting, try and collect resources from a variety of places, and in a variety of forms. Different forms could be books, video, in-person conferences, or through conversations. This way, you can find a learning method that works for you, making you more interested and motivated to achieve your goals. Some websites you can look through for resources which can help you improve your skills include:

3. Practice Consistently

To learn a new skill, you need to constantly work on it. Having this learning mindset will allow you to achieve your goals, as well as become more adaptable in your career. Understanding the value of practice can help you become a patient and well-rounded employee. You can also integrate reflection and review as a part of skill enhancement, where you can learn to introspect about your experiences. 

Skill enhancement is an important part of your overall career path. Learning new skills can help you land a new role, higher pay, and allow you to develop personally as well. Hard and soft skills can be learned in a variety of ways, and keeping track of your progress can help keep you motivated to achieve your skill enhancement goals. You can also find other career advice on CakeResume, for everything from resume writing, to interviews, to enhancing your career.

--- Originally written by Bronte McNamara ---