Soft Skills That Will Help You Succeed

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As a college student, you’re probably here with the goal of learning a thing or two. Taking hours of classes every day of the week isn’t just for show! Hopefully, you’ll leave college having learned a couple of valuable skills that you’ll carry with you into the ‘real world’ and onto your career. However, there are some skills that you don’t necessarily learn from any particular class or out of a textbook.

A ‘soft skill’ isn’t something tangible like knowing how to navigate an Excel spreadsheet full of figures or how to mix chemical solutions together. They’re interpersonal skills that help you interact harmoniously with the people around you. You’ll pick up a few of them along the way but these are just a couple of the soft skills that employees look for in candidates:

Time Management
One of the most important skills you’ll learn as a college student is how to manage your time efficiently. You might spend less time in class every day than you did in high school but you’ll spend a lot more time completing the coursework for those classes. Even though your classes might end early in the day and you have extra free time, you have to learn how to spend that time in a productive way. Sure, you could take a nap and walk around looking for more Pokemon in PokemonGO, but should you? Probably not. Instead, you could spend it doing homework, studying up for that big test, and getting a start on that paper that’s due in a month.

If you need a little help keeping yourself on track, you can try using an app to keep your schedule in line. Evernote is like a portable notebook on your phone that syncs between all of your devices so you’re never without your updated list. If you prefer to go analog, the Bullet Journal is a great physical way to keep all of your to-do lists in one place.

Stop, Collaborate, and Listen
You’ve been primed for it since elementary school: working in groups. Everyone has a different method of getting things done (some don’t get things done at all) but the trick is learning how to combine all of those methods to complete your project before the deadline strikes. When you need somewhere quiet and out of the way to work on your group projects, head to Clairmont Reserve’s WiFi equipped clubhouse. It’s better than waiting for a table in the library and it’s comfortably in your own apartment complex.

Leadership Skills
While it’s really important to be able to function as a part of a group, it’s also really important that you have the ability to step forward and lead. Even though it can be daunting to have to separate yourself from your classmates and lay down the law, it’s something that employers look for in a potential candidate. Opportunities will present themselves, you just have to step up and take them. Go out for student leadership positions, join a student group, and take charge during group projects in class. Your chance to prove your leadership abilities will present itself, you just have to be ready to seize it! Check out Emory University’s list of campus organizations to find one that fits your interests.

You’ll learn a lot in college from your professors but there are a lot of things that you’ll have to pick up on your own. What soft skills have you picked up in college so far?