Are you a student? Looking for ways to gain professional skills?
To survive in this competitive world every student needs to master professional skills. These experiences will help you stand out from the crowd and also will add value to your resume and LinkedIn profile. You can demonstrate your skills and strengths through these experiences during your interview.
Let’s delve into this learning session on what are these professional skills and how you can acquire them.
Why are skills so important for career development?
Skills are a set of learned abilities that a person acquires through various experiences. A career is an individual journey of learning and implementation. It is an occupation undertaken by an individual for a certain period.
Students are future assets for any nation and it’s very important to train these young minds in the right direction. Students need to adapt and learn several skills to excel in their careers, it may include soft skills like interpersonal skills, problem-solving, adaptability, etc to technical and analytical skills.
5 Ways to gain Professional Skill as a student
Short-term Internships
The duration of such internships is 4-6 weeks long, it helps students to gain professional experience at different times throughout the year than traditional internships. These are more feasible as they are mostly remote.
Internshala is India’s biggest internship platform that provides remote as well as work-from-office internships. It offers both paid and unpaid options. Letsintern is another platform that offers internships in startups. InternWorld offers internships, freelance jobs as well as part-time jobs. If you want to do international internships then do check out Handshake.
Job Simulations
If you are a student who wants to work in a specific job role or a specific company then job simulations are the best option.
The Forage is a platform that will help students gain skills by devoting their 6 to 7 hours per week to virtual roles offered by real companies. It offers these opportunities for a diverse set of careers and companies that a student can go for. These are unpaid opportunities yet you can learn a lot from them.
LinkedIn Learning
Students must add professional skills to their resume to make it strong. LinkedIn learning is a good platform to do so. The courses offered here range from various soft skills such as public speaking, project management, leadership, and many more. The technical skills include coding, marketing, etc. There are also courses in generative AI, and how to use Microsoft Excel, Adobe, and other programs.
Volunteering
As a student, one of the best ways to gain and develop skills is through volunteering. It can be a remote or an offline volunteering experience.
The work here for a student varies from working with underprivileged children, with animals to promoting and fundraising for the organization. You can find several NGOs who provide you with such volunteering experience that will suit your interests as well as your schedule.
Connecting with Alumni
Students should practice and make it a habit of connecting with their seniors and alumni to expand their network of connections. You can create a group where you can exchange more information about jobs or industries that you are interested in.
Implement these 6 Professional skills to enhance your career
Communication skills
Communication is a crucial part of any activity, be it conversing with teachers and friends at school to colleagues and managers at work. Students need to engage in meaningful conversation with their peers and lecturers to express their feelings.
You need to master both verbal and written communication as it will help you build professional connections. Participating in debates or being part of cultural teams can help you improve your communication.
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
We all have some other problems that we need to face in our daily lives.
Whether as an entrepreneur or an employee, we all need to face challenging situations at our jobs and combat them with our problem-solving skills. As a student, developing critical thinking can help you interpret and analyze the situation quickly to develop rational solutions.
Organizational skills
Students are already well-equipped to handle multiple things simultaneously and effectively. Being an organized person would help you handle and manage multiple tasks efficiently.
While working in a company sometimes there could be a workload and tight deadlines, so being able to manage your time effectively would be advantageous.
Practice making small goals for yourself and keep achievable deadlines for them. This will help you keep track of things that need to be done.
Creativity
Every individual is creative in their way and that’s what makes us different from each other. Being creative is not limited to artistic ways, a person can be creative in their regular job as well.
Having a good imagination as a student can help develop authentic ideas and create or improvise products. You can dissolve or provide solutions for critical problems using creativity.
Technical literacy
Every profession has its technical skills that a student should master according to their career goal. For students to succeed in life and the workplace, technological literacy is crucial because it gives them the skills to handle activities related to administration, logistics, and planning.
Perseverance
Perseverance is the key to success, having patience in life is very important to overcome any challenging situation.
It allows you to view situations more practically and professionally. This professional skill helps you to handle difficult situations healthily and productively.
Key Insights
As a student, it’s very important to hone your professional skills.
Keep practising what you learn.
Knowledge will have no value until you implement and utilise it.
You need to master both soft skills and hard skills for your career development.
Really helpful ❤