Skill Development
SOFT SKILLS
Soft skills are personality traits and behaviors. Unlike technical or ‘hard’ skills, soft skills are not about the knowledge you possess but the behaviors you display in different situations. Interpersonal skills and communication skills are more specific categories of these that many employers look for in job candidates.
There are many soft skills that you could list on your resume or cover letter. Some of the most sought after ones include:
Effective communication skills
Teamwork
Dependability
Adaptability
Conflict resolution
Flexibility
Leadership
Problem-solving
Research
Creativity
Work ethic
Integrity
LIFE SKILLS
Life skills are defined as “a group of psychosocial competencies and interpersonal skills that help people make informed decisions, solve problems, think critically and creatively, communicate effectively, build healthy relationships, empathize with others, and cope with and manage their lives in a healthy and productive manner. Life skills may be directed toward personal actions or actions toward others, as well as toward actions to change the surrounding environment to make it conducive to health.” The Basic Life Skills curriculum offers youth the emotional, social and intellectual tools needed to achieve success in life – on a personal level, an interpersonal level, and within their community and work places.
The Basic Life skills provides readily available tools to deal with challenges/demands of daily lives the youth face, from managing their emotions to make an informed decision. It also helps develop children’s personality, talents, and mental and physical abilities, and realize their true potential through learning to know one and others, and make effective decisions to live harmonically together in the society. The Education for All (2000) included life skills among the essential learning tool for survival, capacity development and quality life. It also documented that all young people and adults have the “human right to benefit from an education that includes learning to know, to do, to live together.” recognizing the importance of living together as much as acquiring knowledge from an academic environment.
LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Language is an integral component of communication and helps professionals interact with colleagues, managers and clients effectively. There are four core language abilities that help people exchange ideas, thoughts and emotions. Knowing about these four skills can help improve your communication in the workplace and interaction with customers. In this article, we define language skills, explain four essential language abilities and discuss how to improve them, list their utility in the workplace and share ways of highlighting them when applying for jobs.
Language skills are the abilities that enable you to express your thoughts coherently and communicate with others. These skills provide structure and relevance to the information you wish to convey to the recipient. Reading, writing, listening and speaking are four essential skills that comprise basic language competency. While communicating, people usually use a combination of these skills simultaneously. Choosing the right skills usually depends on various factors urgency of the message, the number of people targeted and whether it is a formal or informal communication.
It is common to combine two or more language abilities while interacting. These skills, when used together, are co-dependent on each other. For example, if listening is an input of information, speaking is a form of output where the audience can interject, ask questions or provide inputs after listening to the message. Similarly, writing is the summary output of what is read, understood and interpreted, which requires reading skills.
ICT AND COMPUTING SKILLS
Information and communication technology (ICT) is an element of many industries, allowing companies to use different tools to complete everyday tasks like sending emails and using programming languages to build proprietary business software. Understanding what these skills are and how to develop them can help you no matter what profession or career path you choose to explore.
In this article, we discuss what ICT skills are, share examples of them and explain how to improve them and highlight them during your job search.
CT skills are abilities that help you understand and operate a wide range of technology software. This can include helping users with tasks on computers, such as making video calls, searching on the internet or using a mobile device like a tablet or phone. ICT skills can also include any direct interaction with technology, including turning on a computer, using hardware to print and copy documents and using digital cameras to capture photographs or video footage.
Technological knowledge
Social media management
Desktop publishing
Word processing
Collaboration
Problem-solving
Organization
Problem-solving
Research