Add These Career Skills to Your Toolbox in 2025

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Tuesday, January 7, 2025
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The New Year is a time for reinvention. It’s the promise of a clean slate, a fresh start, a chance to do things differently this time. It’s a good time to push yourself to learn new things. If you’re looking to broaden your skill set as a professional in 2025, there are a few “soft” skills you can learn that will serve you well no matter your field. 

“Soft skills are interpersonal and communication-based abilities, such as critical thinking, communication, teamwork, and adaptability, while hard skills are specific, teachable technical competencies, like programming or data analysis, that are often measurable and acquired through education or training,” said Gina Pinch, Rio Salado College Faculty Chair for Business, Management, and Public Administration.

Consider adding a few of these skills to your professional toolbox.

Critical Thinking

As AI technology becomes more prevalent, the ability to read and think critically is more important than ever. Generative AI programs like ChatGPT can “hallucinate” and produce false information backed up by fabricated sources. This is where critical thinking comes in. Can you spot a made-up source? Do you have a finely-tuned nonsense detector in your brain? When was the last time you read or heard something that made you second-guess its veracity?

There’s a cheap and effective way to boost your critical thinking skills: get a library card. Close reading of fiction and nonfiction texts are an effective way to engage your critical thinking faculties. Pay close attention to cited sources in nonfiction books and articles. What seems credible? What rings alarm bells? 

Another way to train this skill is to consume a variety of news sources. If you watch one news channel or read the same site every day, continue to do that but also read and watch their competitors. Read international media sources like the BBC. Observe the differences in how the same story can be presented through different outlets. Notice the discrepancies: what gets left out? What gets emphasized? Learn to separate the wheat from the chaff and you’ll be a more well-rounded professional.

Public Speaking

Being able to speak comfortably in front of an audience is an invaluable skill that can come in handy in many different industries. Whether it’s presenting at a meeting, delivering a lecture, or even addressing a table of hiring managers for a job interview, being able to conquer your stage fright and speak with confidence is important. For many Americans, studies have found that their fear of public speaking is stronger than their fear of death. This is why so many public speakers are seen as naturally charismatic people: it isn’t necessarily their innate charm that makes them so compelling, it’s just the fact that they’re willing to do something that terrifies so many people and they do it well.

Training in public speaking can give you a greater awareness of body language and how you present yourself to others while also teaching you how to be a better listener. There are organizations like Toastmasters International that are specifically dedicated to helping people become better speakers. Another way to improve your public speaking skills is to take an acting or improv class. Even if you have no desire to be a performer, the skills you can learn there in regards to reading a room, thinking quickly on your feet, and speaking with conviction will serve you well in your professional life.

Time Management

If “time is money,” as the old saying goes, why not put time on a budget? For anyone struggling to get their finances under control, the benefits of budgeting are obvious. Much like how making a budget helps you find and cut the waste out of your spending, being more mindful of how you spend your time can achieve a similar effect. Think of all the stress you’ve felt in your life for being behind schedule on something or having to rush from one task to another with no time to catch your breath. Good time management can help alleviate that stress.

"Developing strong time management skills will benefit both your personal and professional life," said Pinch. If you want to achieve a better work/life balance, being able to properly manage your time so you can give each dimension of your life the right amount of attention is essential.

The key to time management is understanding how you spend your time. Take an inventory of your time over the course of a week of your life. How much time do you spend working, recreation, exercise, household chores, and/or spending time with family and friends? What are your commitments and how much time do they require of you? How much time do you spend commuting to and from work? How much free time do you have? Once you know how you’re spending your time, you can create a new schedule that uses your time more efficiently. You can also use apps to help you manage your time while on task, and use methods like the Pomodoro Technique to add more structure to your working sessions.

Elevator Pitch

If you had to explain who you are and what you do, could you do it right away? Could you explain in just a few sentences what you have to offer as a professional? This is what an elevator pitch is: a concise, effective summation of what you have to offer that can be delivered in a single paragraph. Communication is a soft skill; consider the elevator pitch one of its most direct and distilled forms, much like how a haiku is poetry boiled down to its most bare essence.

If you’re on the job market, being able to hit a few quick bullet points that touch on your skill set, your ambitions, and your past experience off the top of your head is a good skill to have. This is especially true in networking situations where you may not have a resume on hand.

Elevator pitches aren’t just useful for job seekers; being able to “nutshell” a project for work is important too. Think of the elevator pitch as a sneak preview, a little teaser that intrigues people enough that they want to hear more about what you’re doing. If you’re working on a project that you need to present or report on and find that you can’t sum it up in a few sentences, taking the time to develop an elevator pitch will help you clarify your thinking. If something is too hard to explain, there’s the possibility that it might be too incoherent or poorly structured to explain. 

 

 

Article by Austin Brietta

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