As a fresh graduate, we do not have the necessary experience that will fully equip us with what we need to guarantee employability. We may have the knowledge, having been taught extensively in school of the necessary information we should acquire, but this does not really completely prepare us for the things to come, in the corporate world.

Our first goal is to get a job, and once we attain this, we then work towards excelling at it so that we can advance in our career. So in essence, we want to achieve employability and career advancement. In both areas, soft skills are needed, and must be used so that we can unlock our potentials and hone our abilities.

If you want to know which soft skills you need, you will find the answer on this page. In doing so, you can better prepare yourself for this competitive world.

Self Confidence

Having the ability to believe in one’s abilities is quite important. Unfortunately, a lot of people, especially those fresh out of school, struggle with it. Being self-confident helps you positively because it makes you brave enough to make a bold step and take risks, such as volunteering to do a “big” task like giving a presentation and pitching your own ideas in business gatherings, among others.

Being confident means trusting your own abilities and skills, and using them at work. It also has something to do with believing in your own judgment, while still being open to what others have to say, instead of simply allowing others to control you, without giving yourself the chance to weigh things carefully.

Communication Skills

In any aspect of life, communication skills have always been deemed necessary. If you do not know how to communicate with others, you will find it hard to get your message across. It would be hard to speak your mind or open up to someone about what you think and feel. While this is especially true in our personal relationships, companies have always placed a high regard on their employees’ communication skills.

In reality, self confidence and communication skills go together. It is hard to have one without the other. To understand and be understood is important in the workplace because it promotes harmonious relationships, if we are looking at it on the personal side.

On the business aspect, this holds a very important role when it comes to brainstorming sessions, meetings, and discussions with your bosses and colleagues. You should be able to speak up and put your ideas on the table. If you had a really brilliant idea and yet you did not think it was brilliant at all, sooner or later somebody else might just steal the limelight from you and have the same idea. So this person gets recognized for this idea and you find out too late that it was brilliant, after all.

Time Management Skills

Being newly employed, one of the challenges you have to deal with is time management. This is common, even to seasoned workers. The problem lies in not having the ability to manage priorities, and as a result, nothing gets done.

Time management means having the ability to determine the important from the unimportant tasks; be able to pinpoint distractions and prevent them from disrupting your work; and also to create workable systems that help you become more efficient. With time management, you become more productive. You can meet deadlines without a problem, thereby improving your job performance.

Bear in mind that when you improve your performance at work, you are contributing to the organization’s performance.

As a fresher, you need to be able to standout from the rest so that you will get noticed by your superiors. When you are new to the company, you must prove your worth in the first 90 days because this is perhaps the most crucial time of your employment. Remember that first impressions last, and it is what you do in this 90-day period that will build the impression of what your superiors will have of you. Work to impress by utilizing these soft skills effectively, and this will all be to your advantage in the end.