Workplace hard and soft skills: What you need to be successful, part 1

With well over 10 years in the workforce, I have been able to discern what skills, knowledge and leadership are needed to navigate one’s career. 

Unlike what most college grads think, getting good grades doesn’t translate in the real world and being the smartest or having the most industry knowledge won’t necessarily get you a job. 

A combination of technical know-how (hard skills) as well as your ability to communicate, persuade and how well you get along with others (soft skills) are the keys to career success. 

Every industry requires certain skills and knowledge but here are the most essential skills, at a minimum, that are required for almost every knowledge-worker position today.

Computer skills: Every position I ever had required me to use a computer or laptop, 95% of my day. And at the top of this list is using email to correspond to clients, customers, and coworkers. 

What is essential here is being able to write clearly and concisely, while knowing how to attach documents to forward information and to provide screenshots for emphasis and clarity. 

Email is used extensively to document conversation threads, to assign job responsibility, and to communicate essential information. 

Microsoft Teams, a form of chat and video calls, is heavily used in most office environments. Teams is an easy and convenient way to communicate instantly to employee groups or individual coworkers. 

You will need to know how to make meeting appointments using the calendar scheduler, how to present slideshow presentations, and how to attach documents, through chat, intended for the end user.

Your ability to know how to set up your camera, visual background, and practice video etiquette, such as muting your mic when not talking, will go far, too.

Excel spreadsheets are an essential software to store, pull, and analyze company data.

I have been able to get by over the years by knowing the basics such as copying and pasting new data, being able to filter it, to more complicated tasks such as performing pivot tables, concatenate and v-lookup formulas.

However, earlier in your career if you are able to acquire more sophisticated Excel expertise by becoming an Excel whiz among your peers, you will be considered more essential and have more career growth opportunities down the road.  

Finally, PowerPoint slides are heavily relied upon during most presentations, whether it be addressing large, quarterly all-hands staff meetings to client sales presentations made up of only a handful of people.

Essential here is being able to collect and to display data that summarizes your point in a simple and understandable way by using bar charts, graphs, and data points.

Therefore you will need to be able to insert and utilize charts and graphs and to color-code them in a clean and compelling manner.  

These are just the bare minimum requirements for most office jobs today.

On top of this, depending on your industry, you most likely will be required to have working knowledge of SAP systems, ERP (enterprise resource planning), design software, and other trade-specific computer software.

If you are a recent college graduate just starting your career to someone who is trying to get back in the the job market after spending some time away, learning these basic computer skills are essential.

One way to do this is on-the-job training, but importantly, supplementing your learning through evening community courses, which I had done over the years, can really play a pivotal role.