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Skills-based hiring is becoming more on the rise because employees want to see more than just your qualifications. In other words, employers are increasingly seeking to appoint candidates who don’t only possess technical qualifications but can adapt to company culture and success. With the job market getting more competitive, it is important that job seekers present potential employers with a holistic package that sets them apart from their peers.

Surprisingly, soft skills are often lacking, not much coaching is offered outside of curricula. Having skills that are outside the classroom is becoming more and more of a requirement for employees.

What are soft skills?

“Think of soft skills as your personal skills — things you do that make you a great employee outside of the technical skills that are needed for the job. They may come naturally to you, or perhaps you’ve added some classes to your list to augment these abilities”. While soft skills sometimes get practiced through group work, assignment deadlines and class interactions, shortfalls made in these areas by the students are not highlighted. As a result, students are not given guidance on how to improve these skills and apply them in different scenarios.

While students who are pursuing a college degree have a big advantage, it’s not enough. They have the ability to learn, which is a skill that employers desire. But learning in the classroom and excelling in the workplace are two different things.

To get ahead of the game, here are a few pointers graduate students should focus on developing outside of the classroom through part-time or vac work while earning their qualifications.

• Read and stay informed on world trends – Example: the impact Bitcoin will have on business operations and on your career.
• Awareness – You need to try and be socially, economically and politically aware of the development of your surroundings.
• Communication – This is a broad skill but it can vary from how you converse with colleagues and team members to how you get your point across in an email). Now that most communication is done via chats, and emails, it is imperative that you learn to interact in a team and communicate.
• Business acumen – This is the ability to understand business issues. This could include both general and organization-specific knowledge about business. This is an attractive trait particularly if you pursue a more corporate career route.
• Data Analytics – Employees in Technology may be most familiar with data analytics, however, it is becoming more important for general employees to be able to look at basic data and be able to translate that information into easy language. This will help you make strategic and educated decisions.

When you’re able to invest in skills outside of your classroom/workplace, you’re able to contribute to strengthening your personal brand.

Personal branding

The biggest advantage of building a personal brand is that you become a subject matter expert, gain more career opportunities, and may also grow in your community of followers. 

Notably, focusing on building your brand doesn’t mean that you’re on a hunt for a new job. You’re actually to use and transfer insight from your personal brand to investing in the company that you work for.

Useful questions to ask to begin mapping out a personal brand:

1. What skills am I good at?
2. How does my work differ from other professionals?
3. How does my work add value to business operations?

If you are an employee with a strong personal brand that can also establish themselves as a subject matter expert and thought leader, in turn, this lends your organization more authority and credibility. A win-win situation. This is why it is essential to understand that building your personal brand helps you expand your networks, providing you with new opportunities, helping you to keep up with industry trends, developing new skills, and more.

The concept of creating a visual image map in your mind’s eye toward achieving your goals is nothing necessarily new—ever heard of the quote “what the mind can conceive, it can achieve”. This speaks to the fact that if you can visualize achieving your goal and the steps to get there, you can bring it into reality. You need to work towards clearly understanding your career plan and the possible outcomes of the work you’re putting in, otherwise you may find yourself in situations where you attain your goals but do not understand the “why” behind the goal.

When structuring your career path, visualizing the future that you want is critical. Creating a vision of your future role, environment, and lifestyle will set you on the right path to making the right decisions.

What is visualization?

• Visualization is the process of creating a mental image of a goal you would like to achieve in the future. You use your thoughts to imagine a certain outcome, and what you will do to get it.
• Where do you see yourself within a decade? What type of job do you do? In which environment? What level of influence do you have? Do you have an impact positively on other people?
• Most importantly, ask yourself “why”. You need to know the reasons behind it.

Be detailed about your career path

Visualizing your career requires you to create a very detailed and specific image of your future. Additionally, to envision your future career, you need to outline the contents of your future lifestyle.

You create a life goal plan by answering these two questions for your life:

1. What do you want to start doing?
2. What do you want to stop doing?

How to visualize the end goal of your career

1. Create a mental image

Visualize how you see yourself in extreme detail. Be so detailed that you can even include the environment of your office, the kind atmosphere, the mission and vision of the company, is it in the public or private sector? Is it a multinational corporation or a local NGO?

2. Set pragmatic goals and take actions

• You need to ask yourself what needs to happen for your goals to become a reality and thereafter, visualize the small steps you need to take to get there. In other words, break down your bigger picture into bite-size chunks. Experts on visualizing your dreams have even said that every day, you need to do something that brings you closer to your dream. Therefore, daily focus and execute on the methods to help you reach your outcomes.
• Regardless of how large or successful the actions that you take care of in the long run, by taking action, you’re proving to your subconscious mind that you’re moving in the direction of your goals, which makes achieving them seem less far-fetched.

3. Celebrate small wins

Further than that, whenever you make a milestone, motivate yourself by celebrating those wins. Have you finally completed an application? Celebrate. Got a promotion at work? Celebrate.

4. Be open to redirection

The key to reaching career goals is always being open to life’s pleasant surprises. Life has a way of surprising us and our careers are no exception, so I encourage you to have confidence in yourself and your ability to reach your career goals while maintaining an open mind about what the journey may be like in your pursuit.

The more we routinely get specific about our goals and become detailed about our ambitions, the more we’re able to trick our brains and allow ourselves to believe that our goals are attainable. As a result, we become more tenacious in our efforts to achieve our dreams.

In a saturated and competitive job market, nothing is more significant than turning towards unconventional methods to attract career opportunities.

The competition for top honours also applies inside the school environment. For example: submitting a bursary application also demands creative thinking and the ability to highlight yourself as the perfect candidate.

This requires a strong understanding of your character traits, life story, knowledge acquired and skill set. This combination will allow you to begin building a strong personal brand.

Below are a few methods that can help you along — both in the classroom and the boardroom.

Learn and work well individually

In a business environment that values independence, it’s useful to teach yourself to learn and work well on your own.

Be a self-starter.

This one habit will expand the value of your contributions to any project.

Of course, it’s also important to balance the scales by also learning to work efficiently within a group setting. To achieve any success in the workplace, it’s critical to be a strong communicator and coordinate projects with other people to achieve a common goal.

It’s all about pulling from opposite directions.

Build relationships with recruiters and potential colleagues before you even need them

One of the most underrated skills in business is building genuine human relationships.

Especially when you do it with the intent to bring commercial value to another person.

For example: before you even graduate and enter the job market, it’s useful to create connections with people who work in your field of study.

E-mail and social media platforms make this activity easier to pull off. One way of doing this is leaving positive and thoughtful comments on other people’s social media posts.

Build rapport with people and make it a daily habit.

Use LinkedIn and DM’s to amplify your job search

Make it easier for future colleagues to find and connect with you.

One fundamental step to take is to use LinkedIn more. The platform is well designed for a person who wants to refine their content creation and networking skills to advance their career.

A key realisation, though, is that it’s the same as any other social media platform – only business-focused. But don’t be intimidated by those dynamics. Instead, use it to share with your network the concepts and ideas you picked up at school.

Write about your life stories and tie them to professional insight.

The trick is to go beyond the job boards and focus groups. The unconventional, used well, can bring you great results for your career:

• Write blog articles that cover topics in your field of study.
• Send updates on LinkedIn with the link to the articles.
• This habit alone will support your ideation, writing and critical thinking skills.
• It will also boost your confidence because publishing ideas in public takes willpower.

And if your targeted people are active on social media, it’s also a good opportunity to send Direct Messages to initiate those conversations with them.

Rely on research

Develop a habit of being curious about people and working systems.

This makes it far easier to collect information from company websites, media releases, and employee-generated content and follow different people in the companies you want to work with.

Read job boards, reviews and other pieces of news about the companies you want to work with. Deep knowledge about their business operations will work in your favour when you get invited for interviews.

Ask interesting questions

It’s crucial to show up in interviews, emails or DMs with intelligent questions.

Discovery is a key activity for different types of managers. This includes finding new challenges in the market. Great managers are curious people, always probing and driven by data to solve commercial problems.

Asking thoughtful questions is a chance to showcase your problem-solving skills.

Indeed, if you work to understand a business, you’ll inevitably come up with questions about what you’ve learned or did not understand. 

Promote your skills and thought process using side projects

It is fairly easy to assume that marketing and self-promotion during a job search (or any other period in your career) can come off as arrogant. Don’t fall for that trap!

Sharing information about your work is as important as the work itself.

When you don’t market yourself, people will never learn about your work, skill set and achievements.

And in the professional world, promoting yourself well is one of the trademarks of a valuable team member in any business.

During the search for a job and other career growth opportunities, it’s important to dig beneath the surface.

Especially when the rate of unemployment continues to rise. Plus, not all career opportunities are announced on public platforms. Employers may offer certain jobs to internal employees or hire independent recruiters to source outside candidates. 

To even begin converting your qualification into work opportunities, the first step is turning towards unconventional methods.

Learning to identify off-the-beaten-path career opportunities can be a lifelong game changer.

In this article, we unpack five strategies to start off with:

Join professional groups

You can draw out potential opportunities through alumni associations.

Fellow alumni might provide information on job openings that are not publicly listed. You can also join professional societies focused on your profession or field of study. Businesses in the industry are likely to reach out to these associations before announcing vacancies on any other platform. 

These professional bodies offer events that can help grow your network with industry colleagues or alumni who work at your favourite companies. In turn, the same connections can give advice on what you’re searching for and potentially connect you to hidden opportunities.

Contact employers directly

Instead of waiting for job openings to surface, you can show initiative by starting conversations. 

You can also use existing relationships to find relevant hiring managers and how you may contact them. 

To establish contact, you can send a prospective email or make a cold call.

When (cold) contacting a HR manager or recruiter, introduce yourself and showcase the skills, experiences and achievements that make you a perfect fit for their business. 

To pull this off well, dive into research on the company. Find out ways you can align your skill set with the company’s mission, values and operations. 

Pursue volunteer work opportunities

Another tack is finding volunteering opportunities related to your professional or personal interests. 

Finding volunteer opportunities connected to your passion can also be an efficient networking strategy. Uncovering such opportunities at organizations you want to work with can help inspire internal connections.

In turn, volunteer work can also help showcase a different side of your skills. It can also prove the inherent value you might bring on as a full-time employee.

As you nurture the relationships, you can easily show interest in new jobs and learn when there are vacancies that suit your skills. 

That’s why having warm introductions and referrals from internal employees can vastly differentiate your application from other candidates.

Use your degree and leverage your transferable skills to break into other careers

Transferable skills are ‘soft’ skills that are relevant and helpful across different areas of business. 

When making career changes, transferable skills can be used to position your previous work experience for the job you’re competing for.

No matter the job or industry you find your skill set in, transferrable skills can apply.

Transferable skills examples:

• Written & Verbal Communication 
• Public speaking
• Giving and receiving feedback
• Team building, delegation and conflict resolution 
• Project management
• Collaboration  
• Creativity
• Analytical thinking  

Learn the art of the pitch

Research; identify projects and corporate initiatives that your skills can improve for your prospects.

In an academic environment, it’s imperative to work well independently and also collaborate seamlessly with other people. That’s the first step.

The second most important quality in a strong skill set is identifying tacit work opportunities and clearly communicating how you can create economic value for your colleagues.

To that end, here’s a five-step process to land more job interviews:

1. Identify your favourite businesses
2. Chat to employees at those companies
3. Find out what problems they need solved
4. Brainstorm ideas for those problems and share them with the relevant department heads (use this add-value-first tactic as a conversation starter)
5. Rinse and repeat this process over time

Proving your economic value upfront (either through creating content, sending well researched networking emails, etc.) makes getting internal recommendations easier from your network.