Ten skills that employers want

Traditional goal setting focuses on the beginning and the end—start strong and keep your eye on the prize. Unfortunately, that process doesn’t work for every kind of goal, says Scott Young, author of How to Change a Habit.

“A lot has been taught around the classic self-help style of Zig Ziglar or Tony Robbins where you have a clear goal, you visualize it, write it down, and focus on the starting point,” says Young, cofounder of the career development course Top Performer. “Some goals, though, aren’t clearly sequential.”

The middle can and should be your starting point when you’re setting a goal where you’re unclear of the level you can achieve within a particular timeframe. This is especially the case with daunting, unfamiliar goals where you don’t yet have a strong sense of the big picture.

I can admit it now; I  was completely clueless about a lot of things in my first job out of college. From navigating complicated office hierarchies to knowing exactly what to wear in the workplace, and just exactly how I was supposed to figure things out myself when I had no idea what I was doing. It took me a while to understand the etiquette and unspoken rules of the workplace that now seem so obvious.

Of course, I learned with time and would probably not trade my then-naivety for anything else. It did, after all, force me to learn lessons that are so drilled in my head now as a working person. If it wasn’t for my cringeworthy expectation that I was always going to be given clear instructions and then realizing I was wrong, my brain wouldn’t be set to the “automatically anticipate needs” mode that it’s on today. If it wasn’t for me being completely unhappy (and useless) in my first job, I might not have been brave enough to take the plunge and pursue the career that I really wanted.

hen it comes to our daily schedule, most people fall into one of two camps:

The over-scheduler: Their calendars look like a kindergartener’s finger painting. Meetings overlap meetings while reminders for events, breaks, tasks, and more meetings are going off like it’s New Year’s Eve. Their days are determined from the moment they wake up to their evening routine.

The minimalist: Also known as “The Dreamer.” They’ve got one or two recurring events, but a whole lot of whitespace so they’re “free” (at least on paper) for long stretches of work.

The problem is that both of these are terrible. For their own reasons.

Being over-scheduled leaves us no time for ourselves. The more “in control” we are of our calendar, the less control we feel like we have over our lives. Not to mention we’re notoriously bad at knowing how long tasks take us to do. When your schedule is this jammed, even going 15 minutes over on your morning task will throw your whole day out of whack.

And the minimalist? Well, they’re just living in la la land, aren’t they? They’ve offloaded their schedule to some other format–most likely a to-do list, scheduling app, or series of angry emails asking “Where is this?”

A good daily schedule is a blueprint for a successful life. Knowing what we’re doing and when empowers us with a sense of purpose, meaning, and focus.

Some days you get to work early, work nonstop, and head home without being able to figure out what you actually accomplished. Everything rushes past you in a blur of emails, meetings, and errands, and your to-do list remains more or less untouched. You’re always going to have a few workdays like this no matter what you do. But if they start happening regularly, you may have a problem on your hands.

If that’s the case, then it’s time to start looking for systematic failures, not just one-off fumbles. And ironically enough, the best place to look may be at your to-do list itself. What better record do you have of the tasks that you’re consistently failing to achieve? These are a few common to-do list items that might be getting in the way of your more important goals. If you can cut them out–even just for a day or two–you may be able to regain your footing.

We may live in a digital world, but soft skills like communication, problem solving, collaboration, and empathy are becoming more valued than technology, says Paul Roehrig, chief strategy officer for Cognizant Digital Business, a business and technology service provider.

“People skills are more and more important in an era where we have powerful and pervasive technology,” he says. “It sounds counterintuitive, but to beat the bot, you need to be more human.”

When evaluating their hiring plans for 2017, 62% of employers rate soft skills as very important, according to CareerBuilder. But a recent survey by the Wall Street Journal found that 89% of executives are having a difficult time finding people with these qualities.

First-time managers often ask themselves how to develop a leadership style that suits them: “Who should I model myself after? What kind of leader should I be?” It’s great to think critically about your approach to managing others, particularly when you’re new to it, but these questions won’t exactly help you.

That’s because they assume that leadership is something you try on and show off, a “style” that’s curated and intentional. But especially in the beginning, your style will be based far less on mirroring others’ habits and behaviors and far more on instinct and intuition. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

We get it, finding a mentor can be difficult and time-consuming. But when you do find one (or two), they can save you from making costly mistakes that can set you back in your career. Simply put, having a mentor will improve the quality of your decisions and provide opportunities that won’t be available to you otherwise.

There’s this idea that that mentors are older people with established careers and well-honed skill sets who provide guidance to younger mentees, but this isn’t always the case. The key to success is selecting the mentor who best suits your needs at any given stage of your career: entry level, middle management level, or executive level. If you’re an entrepreneur or creative person, you can think of these stages as early career, mid-career, and advanced career.

Have you ever heard about someone “cutting the line” to land their dream job? They’re the people getting the perfect position without ever submitting a resume, or negotiating a sweet signing bonus plus five weeks’ vacation, or getting hired for a role the company created just for them. How do they do it? Are they just naturally golden? Or do they know something you don’t?

While you might use the word lucky, these folks aren’t necessarily more talented; they’ve simply perfected a way of approaching the job search in a manner others haven’t been trained in (or are fearful of adopting). This out-of-the-box approach gives them a notable advantage when it comes to standing out.

So what do they know, and how can you follow their lead to make your next transition not only more quickly, but more successfully as well? Do what they do: