Ten Ways College Prepares You for Career Success
Getting a college education doesn’t mean just absorbing facts and figures. It means building the skills and qualities you need to learn, think and create on your own — making you attractive to employers. You’ve already started learning these skills in high school, but college helps you fully develop them.
10 Key Qualities
Writing Skills
Speaking Skills
Teamwork Skills
Problem-Solving Skills
Initiative
Cool Under Pressure
Attention to Detail
Time Management
Honesty
Love of Learning
Writing Skills
Communication is at the top of the list of skills that employers look for. And communication in the workplace often means writing.
Health professionals keep patient charts, researchers depend on the money they collect by writing grant applications, software engineers write technical specifications, and nearly everyone writes e-mail to people inside and outside their organization. And before you even get the chance to interview for a job, you’ll need to present yourself in cover letters and résumés.
So, by doing your best on every research paper and lab report you write, you're preparing yourself for a career.
Speaking Skills
When you're assigned a class presentation, think twice before dismissing it as an unimportant part of your education. Employers look for speaking skills in job applicants, who may have to give presentations to clients or represent their organization in the field. It's never too soon to practice good eye contact and other public speaking techniques.
Teamwork Skills
Every time your class breaks into groups to tackle a challenge, you build teamwork skills. In college, you’ll continue to have these opportunities to practice voicing your opinions, listening and responding to others, and reaching compromises. By the time you leave college, you can be an expert in this important workplace skill.
Problem-Solving Skills
Problem solving goes far beyond your math textbook. Every assignment is an opportunity to weigh all possible solutions carefully and choose the one you think is best. As a working professional, you'll be solving problems regularly, whether it’s fixing a bug in a computer program or overcoming budget shortfalls.
Initiative
Every time you respond in class, every time you choose your own research topic, every time you put together your own interpretation of a piece of literature, you take initiative. And future employers value can-do professionals who come up with new ideas and chart their own course through projects.
Cool Under Pressure
Very few students enjoy taking tests. Yet functioning well under pressure is crucial to your future success. Try thinking of the pressure of testing as practice for the work world's own explosive situations. You could someday find yourself meeting tight deadlines, speaking with irate customers, wielding a scalpel or handling dangerous chemicals.
Attention to Detail
When you double-check your calculations for a math problem or cite sources carefully in a research paper, you're paying close attention to detail. That skill comes in handy in any workplace, whether you maintain a database, keep a log of the hours you spend with clients or write e-mails.
Time Management
You may be a real pro when it comes to juggling the many demands on your time — classes, homework and activities — with some family help. College gives you an even bigger chance to sharpen your time management skills by doing it all on your own. And that's a good thing since most jobs require multitasking. You might need to take care of current clients while attracting new ones, respond to e-mails while working on a major presentation, or order tomorrow's produce while planning next week's menu.
Honesty
Employers need to know that they can trust you with everything from company credit cards to trade secrets. How can you work at honesty? You demonstrate integrity every day that you do your own homework and resist the temptation to cheat on exams.
Love of Learning
Developing an excitement about and enjoyment of learning in high school will help you succeed in college and the workplace. A love of learning can see you through the initial weeks of a new job. It also serves you well as you advance in your career, taking on innovative projects, building expertise and branching into new areas of interest. Today's workforce is mobile and constantly changing. You need to be flexible and able to get up to speed quickly on new ideas, procedures and technology to succeed.
