Quintessential Careers:
Job Skills Job-Seekers Need for Success
Compiled by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.
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Be sure to read our main career/job skills article, How to Capitalize on the Looming Skills Shortage.
What skills do experts believe are most important for workers to possess in this century? This compilation from a variety of sources, while not exhaustive, provides a snapshot of in-demand skills (and in some cases, values and personal characteristics) that can equip individuals with a competitive edge. You will notice significant repetition in the experts’ opinions; skills mentioned by multiple authorities clearly are the most important to bring to the table.
- Integrity
- Energy
- Communication
- Confidence
- Adaptability
- Chemistry (fit with organizational culture)
- Results
- Teamwork
- Confidence in leading
- Interest
Source: Chuck McConnell, executive vice president,
Stewart, Cooper & Coon
- Motivation
- Flexibility
- Independence
- Dedication
- Professionalism
- Customer orientation
- Creativity
- Organizational skills
- Interpersonal skills with teams, customers, and management
- Negotiation
- Conflict resolution
- Ability to encourage employees to express opinions and develop collaborative relationships
- Emotional intelligence
Source: Kathryn Kraemer Troutman, author, president and founder,
The Resume Place
- Intelligence, ability to learn quickly
- Ability to make good decisions quickly
- Analytical, inquiring, logical
- Ability to work well under pressure and willingness to work hard
- Competitiveness, enjoyment of challenge
- Ability to apply oneself to a variety of tasks simultaneously
- Thorough, organized, efficient
- Good time-management skills
- Resourceful, determined, and persistent
- Imaginative, creative
- Objective and flexible
- Cooperative and helpful
- Good listening skills
- Sensitive to different perspectives
- Ability to make other people “feel interesting”
Source: Todd Noebel, associate director,
Pfizer
- Talking to one’s boss
- Surviving a poorly run meeting
- Running a meeting
- Figuring out anything independently
- Negotiating
- Having a conversation
- Explaining something in 30 seconds
- Writing a one-page report
- Writing a five-sentence e-mail
- Getting along with co-workers
- Using PowerPoint
- Leaving a voicemail
Source: Guy Kawasaki, author and founder of Garage.com
- Core subjects
- English reading/language arts
- Mathematics
- Science
- Foreign languages
- Civics/government
- Economics
- Arts
- History
- Geography
- 21st century content
- Global awareness
- Financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy
- Civic literacy
- Health and wellness awareness
- Information and communications technology (ICT) literacy
- Learning and thinking skills
- Critical-thinking and problem-solving skills
- Communication skills
- Creativity and innovation skills
- Collaboration skills
- Contextual learning skills
- Information and media literacy skills
- Life skills
- Leadership
- Personal responsibility
- Ethics
- People skills
- Accountability
- Self-direction
- Adaptability
- Social responsibility
- Personal productivity
- Ability to function in a variety of environments and roles
- Teaching skills: Conceptualizing, explaining
- Counseling, interviewing skills
- Public speaking
- Computer and information-management skills
- Ability to support a position or viewpoint with argumentation and logic
- Ability to conceive and design complex studies and projects
- Ability to implement and manage all phases of complex research projects and to follow them through to completion
- Knowledge of the scientific method to organize and test ideas
- Ability to organize and analyze data, to understand statistics, and to generalize from data
- Ability to combine, integrate information from disparate sources
- Ability to evaluate critically
- Ability to investigate, using many different research methodologies
- Ability to solve problems
- Ability to work with the committee process
- Ability to do advocacy work
- Ability to acknowledge many differing views of reality
- Ability to suspend judgment, to work with ambiguity
- Ability to make the best of “informed hunches” (intuition)
Source: Stanford University, Career Planning and Placement Center
- Interpersonal effectiveness
- Customer service
- Systems thinking
- Flexibility/adaptability
- Creative thinking
- Organizational stewardship
- Personal mastery
- Technical competency
- Goal-setting skills
- Time management skills
- Knowledge-management skills
- Team-player skills
- Professional image skills
Source: Consultants Milo and Thuy Sindell
- Oral and written communication
- Computer literacy
- Interpersonal/social
- Critical thinking
- Leadership
- Teamwork
Source: Janette Moody, Brent Stewart, Cynthia Bolt Lee in an article in which recruiters were surveyed about the top skills they seek in applicants, Business Communication Quarterly, 2002
- Technical/professional/job-specific skills
- Leadership/management skills
- Computer skills
- Interpersonal and teamwork skills
- Problem-solving skills
- Communications skills
- Basic skills, such as literacy and numeracy
Source: Workplace Partners Panel’s 2005 Viewpoints Leadership Survey (Canada)
Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key college, career, and job-search terms by going to our Job-Seeker's Glossary of Job-Hunting Terms.
Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., creative director and associate
publisher of Quintessential Careers, is an educator, author,
and blogger who provides content for Quintessential Careers,
edits QuintZine,
an electronic newsletter for jobseekers, and blogs about storytelling
in the job search at A Storied
Career. Katharine, who earned her PhD in organizational behavior
from Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, OH, is author of Dynamic
Cover Letters for New Graduates and A Foot in the Door: Networking
Your Way into the Hidden Job Market (both published by Ten Speed Press),
as well as Top Notch Executive Resumes (Career Press); and with
Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., Dynamic Cover Letters, Write Your
Way to a Higher GPA (Ten Speed), and The Complete Idiot's Guide
to Study Skills (Alpha). Visit her
personal Website
or reach her by e-mail at
kathy(at)quintcareers.com.
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