How To Figure Out What Skills You Need To Learn To Improve Your Career

Everybody wishes to top career graph early on in life. We all wish to have a nice apartment, a fancy car, and a lavish lifestyle by the time we reach 40. If you are to win this race you need to put in “extra” efforts for extraordinary results. But what are those extraordinary skills that you need to have to ace your career? How do you find out what is lacking in you to reach the top? Here are some of the ways to find what skills you need to learn to improve your career. Read also: Best Career Opportunities In Different Cities Of Pakistan

Review Your Job Description And Job Specification:

This serves as the starting point to analyze your skill level. Examine your job specification and job description in detail. Conduct self-examination to gauge whether you possess the skills sufficiently or not that is required to perform the job. In case of any discrepancies in your skill level and skill required, think of ways how to overcome the difference.

Analyze Your Skill Level:

There are many soft skills that you must have if you are to progress in your career. These are the personality traits that help you stand out in the crowd. Organizations need highly capable people at the top who can sail the company in the right direction. These skills include good time management, creative thinking, out of the box thinking, good decision making and good leadership skills. Your skill level is directly proportional to your professional competence. The better skilled you are the higher you will fly in your career.

Review Your Performance Appraisal:

Every organization conducts a performance appraisal to provide an objective assessment of an employee’s performance. This gives a basis on which remuneration, promotion, and other relevant issues are decided. An analysis of performance appraisal gives an idea of your strengths and weaknesses. It gives an idea of what areas you need to work on. Not only that, you get to understand which skill is more significant from the company’s point of view allowing you a chance to set your priorities right. Also, you get to know about your core strengths on which you can capitalize.

Discuss Your Performance With Your Supervisor And Your Peers:

Getting feedback from others also helps you identify what skills you need to improve your career. You can discuss your performance appraisal with your supervisor to get feedback on your performance. You can ask him what skills you should learn to improve your career graph. He can also guide you as to how to acquire those skills. He can refer to some training programs or short courses to augment your skill level. Sometimes your peers can be quite handy in telling you what skills you must improve to advance in your career. You can observe their performance and identify in what ways their performance fares better than yours. They can give you some useful advice and career counseling.

Take Self-Analysis Tests:

There are many tests and self-assessments that allow you to gauge your skill level. Usually, these assessments test your soft skills. They put you in a situation and ask for your response. Based on your response your skill level is ascertained. These tests help you identify how emotionally intelligent you are. They also indicate if you possess certain personality traits or not. Along with pinpointing particular values and skills, these tests also boost your confidence.

Some Of The Most Important Skills Required To Improve Your Career:

Sound Knowledge Of Industry:

Corporate give preference to those employees who display a sound knowledge of the industry and the relevant stakeholders. A person who is well-informed about the business environment is more likely to make correct and fruitful decisions. Not only that, he likely to predict accurately future environmental changes. This allows one to prepare for these changes ahead of time. In order to be successful, you need to be sharp enough to identify potential threats and opportunities of the future in advance and devise an appropriate strategy to tackle them. Such employees are assets of the organizations.

Adept Communication Skills:

Communication is rightly termed as the bloodline of any organization. Effective communication, be it internally or externally is the key to success for any organization. You should know how to be clear, objective and concise with your message. You should know how to ensure your message has been received and understood well by the intended recipient. Good communication skills are quite useful for negotiation with external partners. Be it your suppliers or retailers, negotiations take place everywhere. Effective communication within the organization is very important for overall good performance. This includes communication between different functional departments or geographic departments.  Such employees who are good at communication excel early on in their careers.

Strong Team Working Skills:

The phrase that “no man’s an island” had never been truer. You cannot expect to do well by just doing your part without coordinating and taking along other team members. In fact, the results cannot be achieved if you fail to work with a team. You must be a good team player who knows how to coordinate and get together everyone in order to achieve exceptional results. At the same time, you may be part of a cross-functional team working on a particular project as well as a departmental team. You must be skilled enough to manage different teams at the same time.

Positive Attitude:

A positive approach towards life and a career is very important for a shining record. True leaders are those who think positively and approach problems from different perspectives. You must know how to think out of the box to get problems of solutions and come up with brilliant ideas. A person is faced with challenging situations every now and then in a career. What is important is to keep your cool under pressure and think logically. You should not get overwhelmed by the intensity of the situation. Rather focus on coordinating, organizing and utilizing the resources in the best way for an optimum resolution.