Most of the job seekers (including me) want to be successful in their next interview by doing something different, but in reality it’s possible only, if there is a match between type of skills that the job seeker has and required job skills list by the employer.
According to rightmanagement research “Leadership skills (62%) are seen as the most important skills needed for employees in order to drive growth, alongside management skills and resilience”
When I was started looking for a job, I’ve tried almost every possible method that I know, but miserably failed. So my initial failures make me to conduct a research to understand what type of job skills that most of the employers are interested in.
Are you interested in Job skills list?
This article is all about identifying and improving list of job skills to succeed in your next interview, so if you think you can agree to the below points, then you are in a right place.
- Are you desperately looking for a job?
- Are you ready to spend at least 3 to 6 hours of quality time weekly on improving/developing new skills?
If your answer is yes, then this article is for you.
What I understood by analyzing 100+ job postings from various job portals
To understand further more I’ve spent almost two weeks time to conduct a research on what type of job skills that most of the employers are interested (I’ve used ‘Financial Analyst’ position for this research, maybe you could do it for your own area of work), and how to improve them to be successful in our next interview.
Research Findings
After analyzing as many as 100+ job postings, I’m really astonished to see that 20% of the job postings/employers are looking for someone who has a good excel skills to deal with their reporting.
The second place goes to Financial Reporting, about 17% of Job postings have mentioned that, they need a candidate with expertise in Financial reporting, and further more 12% of them have mentioned that they need candidate with accounting knowledge.
Job skills list does not end here, it even goes further like below
Here are my 8 Tips To Reinvent Your Job Skills list
I believe the above research findings would have already given you wonderful insights and required inspiration to take simple and necessary steps to be successful in your career. So here are the 8 most important tips that you don’t want to miss at any point of time in your career ladder.
1) Identify your passion or “a dream job”
According to M.A.P. Maker, ” Passion is the energy that comes from bringing more of YOU into what you do.” In other words its a kind of inner feeling or probably happiness.
The first step is always starts with identifying your passion, most of us call it as a ‘dream job’. Passion is something that makes you happy and keeps you moving forward, even in the hardest times of your career journey.
Rich dad said, “Employees dread the work week and live for the weekend. Their world is made up of two spheres, work and play. The rich don’t know the difference. Their work is their play because they’re passionate about what they do.”
Indeed finding dream job isn’t that difficult, if you think it is, then here is a simple process to identify your dream job.
Step-1: List down at least 3 to 5 interesting areas of work based on your background, skills and education.
Step-2: Assess them individually by asking questions like, will you be happy working on those areas?, will you ready to work, even if employer is not willing to pay as high as other job’s?, do you have required skills to choose this path?, and certainly many more as per your requirement.
Step-3: Finalize your area of interest and do required workarounds
2) Identify required skills
Job skills are the most essential factors to succeed in any area of work, hence it is quite important to identify required skills by doing some research like the one that I did for ‘Financial Analyst job’.
Here is how to:
Step-1: Identify keywords related to your area of interest and search for job postings in well known job portals.
Step-2: Go through every job posting that are closely related to your passion and list down skills mentioned by the employer
For example, you can refer below job description, that I had selected from Naukri.com
Step-3: Do similar activity for as many as 50 job postings and list all the skills in an excel workbook and name it as a ‘Career Manager’
Step-4: Insert Pie chart to identify % of share by each skill in your list (for example, 20% related to excel in my research)
Step-5: Based on the above, find out & add most wanted skills to your to do list and work hard to learn.
3) Improve identified skills
It is the single most important factor to be successful in your chosen field, hence you must pay attention to work on improving skills. You should spare at least 8-10 hours every week to improve skills that you had listed in your workbook.
Here is how to:
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Consider YouTube as a source of information, search for how to videos, guides and tutorials.
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Make use of free online learning platforms like MOOC, Coursera and Khan academy to learn online, personally I’m a great fan of Khan Academy, even today I use very often.
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Use Google search engine to find information that you want, believe me there is a massive content out there, it’s just a matter of a few minutes to find out.
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Consider purchasing few books related to skills that you want to improve (for example to improve, excel skills, I would search for Excel learning books)
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Maybe consider enrolling for few courses from Lynda.com (only if you find a relevant topic based on your research, since there is a cost factor involved in it)
Read also: 10 Incredible Tips To Create Awesome Excel Reports
4) Have a mentor
According to Lisa Quast from Forbes “mentor is someone who helps another person grow, develop, or progress forward in their career”.
In other words, mentor is someone who can help you in making few decisions when you can’t do it alone. Identify a person in your area of interest and ask him/her for suggestions, have a chit chat, bring up conversations.
Revisit your friends circle and let them know that you are searching for someone who can help you in developing certain skills. List their names and contacts in your ‘Career Manager’ workbook and often have a discussions with them about what is happening in your area of interest.
It’s not a bad idea to have virtual mentors, make use of Linkedin groups, apply for membership and post your questions over there, I’m sure there are so many professionals ready to help.
5) Build a professionals Resume
Learning new skills will boost your confidence in your next interview, however its quite essential to exhibit your skills in a professional way to win over your competitors. Here are few tips to build professional looking resume.
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Your resume should be short & precise, make sure it should not exceed two pages
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Don’t write your past experience in paragraphs, instead you can use short bullet points
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Describe your skills in simple sentences (for example, if I have acquired advanced excel skills, I will write “Advanced excel skills to deal with complex reporting requirements”)
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Do not include any skills that you don’t have
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Create a decent profile in your Linkedin account and add a link in your resume
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If your sending a soft copy of your resume to any recruiter, then please convert it as a PDF document and send it.
6) Communication skills are the stepping stone
As per the research conducted by PEW Research center, about 94% of people have considered communication skills are the single most important factor to get ahead in today’s world.
Though you are capable of completing assigned work efficiently by leveraging your skills, it’s quite important to build effective communication skills to communicate what you have done differently in past and how you have saved time.
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The best possible and effective way is to head over to BBC learning English or British council website(s) and learn as much as you can.
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Purchase any fiction book that you like and read at least two times and understand the conversations.
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Always participate in meaningful conversations, and learn how others are forming sentences to communicate information.
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Spend some reasonable time watching any English news channels (my preferred choice is BBC news)
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Don’t forget that Google is always there to help you with any sort of questions that might have, just put your query and get the results.
7) Be confident and give it a try
Confidence is something that sets you apart from losing, since you have put so much effort on acquiring new skills, there is no reason why you shouldn’t be confident. After all, if you think you’re lacking confidence, then you could follow below steps to boost up.
Search for motivational videos in YouTube, and watch them with headphones (to avoid disturbance) before attending any interview.
Practice, practice & practice; always remember that you need to have some practice on how to speak & what speak (you should be well prepared for “Tell me about yourself” question)
8) Your past is your future compass
According to hongkiat “It’s the habitual first ‘instinct’ to feel disappointed in yourself when the start-up you’ve invested so much in fails. After such a defeat, you couldn’t care less about the mantra failure equals feedback that those ‘success gurus’ keep chanting.”
There was a saying “Past is Past”, but my question is, can’t you use your past as a guide for all your future actions? I believe, yes you can use (I have used in many cases) for better results.
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Recall all your past interviews and analyze what went wrong
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Prepare a list of reasons why you have failed and take corrective or preventive actions
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Give it a try with full confidence
What I have learned from my past experience:
To be honest, I have miserably failed in my first interview (If I recall correctly, it was Birla Sunlife Insurance company), even today I still believe that it was my eye opener, I’ve identified my strengths and weakness on that day and eventually worked hard on them, and got though in a big MNC company.
One thing that I strongly believe that “everything will happen for a reason”, whether it is a good or bad doesn’t matter you should continue to believe and move on.
Read also: Excel Vlookup Tutorial That You Always Wanted
Conclusion:
The interview is something that everyone has to face in their career ladder, so why can’t you research and prepare well defined job skills list? (I would call it as a required settings to succeed).
Now it’s your turn to rethink and act. There is no better day than today, stand up and start working on making things better. We just got only one life to do everything, so why are you wasting your precious time on not doing anything?