Workplace Success: 8 Sought-After Qualities Valued By Businesses

Most employers will review a candidate’s hard and soft skills, academic experience, and career history before inviting them to an interview or offering them a job. If you want to impress the hiring managers you meet, however, you must consider the qualities they are looking for in their employees.

Check out eight qualities most businesses want their employees to possess and prepare to convince your employer you can shine in these areas:

1. Commercial Awareness

If you lack commercial awareness, most hiring managers will believe you want the job only for a paycheck and not because of your passion for the brand or industry. This is why employers typically ask key questions to assess your interests during the interview stage, so they can gauge your commercial awareness and passion for the job. 

Employers are looking for candidates who not only have the right qualifications but who also possess a firm understanding of how the company works, its goals, and how it competes in the market. If you can’t display that you have a strong commercial awareness, you are unlikely to be offered a position.

2.   Problem Solving

Both small and large businesses will face various challenges throughout their lifespans, which they’ll need to overcome to thrive in a saturated marketplace. Many companies are looking to hire talented professionals who can solve their problems and provide them with a competitive edge.

For example, in the data science space, as businesses of all sizes have started to realize the benefits of data, they use their data to attract new customers, analyze effective staff working patterns, and tweak product pricing. Many companies are, therefore, looking to hire qualified, data scientists, data analysts, big data engineers and computer scientists.

So, if you’re looking to become a data scientist for example, you will need to have the appropriate educational background - a data science masters program for example, and understand the problem-solving skills within that domain.

3. Networking

You’ve likely heard the saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know that matters”. Many entrepreneurs are more likely to hire talented professionals if they have access to a wide variety of potential customers, clients or investors.

To convince a company to hire you over another candidate and to flourish in a role, you must aim to build strong relationships with people across your chosen sector. In addition to forging relationships on platforms like LinkedIn, consider joining either an industry, organization or business association to expand your network.

4.   Planning & Project Management

Most hardworking professionals will need to work on or manage different tasks each day. For example, you may need to launch a website, implement new policies, or organize and delegate workflow for a team. For this reason, most employers look for team members who can successfully manage resources - money, time, and employees; this can help the business achieve its goals within budget and at a quicker pace.

5.   Strong Leadership

Most employers want to hire leaders of tomorrow. While they might have members of the management team in place, they may one day leave the company and the business will need to quickly replace them.

Most successful entrepreneurs understand the importance of looking to the future, so they keep a close eye on candidates who possess strong leadership skills. For example, they monitor who can motivate a team, support their co-workers, meet deadlines, and can lead by example. 

6.   Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence doesn’t come naturally to some people, but it can determine success. This valuable soft skill enables an employee to use their understanding of people to secure sales, empathize when a customer has a problem and defuse conflict. Emotional intelligence can also help highlight the best time to listen and talk, thereby helping to foster a strong bond with others.

7. Forward Thinking

If an employee isn’t willing to learn new skills or build on their knowledge, their experience could become outdated in a matter of years. If you want to grow with an industry, and ensure it doesn’t outgrow you, you must be ready and willing to learn new things and adapt to evolving technologies and processes. If you or the business don’t embrace new ways of working, you may end up providing your co-workers or industry rivals with an advantage.

8. Team Spirit

Don’t allow ambition stand in the way of productivity or human decency in business. While you might think an employer won’t bat an eyelid when you refuse to help a struggling colleague, they may come to learn of your unhelpful attitude. Rather than appearing selfish or unfriendly, you must aim to establish yourself as a team player. 

Helping your co-workers will prove to an employer you care more about the department and business than your own needs and are committed to solving problems. It will also provide an opportunity to showcase your experience and expertise, which could grab the attention of your manager.

How To Highlight Your Skills

Every ambitious professional must take the time to create an impressive resume, which could help them take their pick of jobs throughout their chosen career. It is essential to consider the above sought-after skills when looking for the right course and writing a resume summary or work history section.

You also could include anecdotes in your cover letter to highlight your professional experience, training and soft skills. In addition, you must thoroughly prepare for the job interview by learning as much about the business and industry, so you can display commercial awareness and answer the interview questions with ease.

Conclusion

Building rock-solid hard and soft skills can take both time and effort. There are, however, actions you can take to acquire some or all the qualities an employer will look for in a member of staff, such as choosing the right degree program, finding an experienced mentor, reading industry textbooks and learning from every negative experience.