7 key skills to develop while you are in college

Whatever you learn in college is no doubt very important and forms the base for your future professional career. However, lack of hands-on experience, business oriented skills and interpersonal skills, among fresh graduates are making them unfit for employment in competitive business environment. Today organizations operate in highly competitive environment, so they look for graduates who have business skills and can immediately hit the work floor. So if you are a college student, you should try to develop the following skills while studying in college: 1.   Effective writing Writing is one skill that would continue to be valuable for you both professionally and personally in the long run. It is one of the most critical skills that employers look for in their potential employees. You may have been writing a number of college assignments and reports for each semester, and you might think you are good at writing. But in reality writing has more dimensions -- editing, grammar, proofreading, correct tone etc. And the most important of all is knowing how to write to convey your thoughts clearly. Good writing or business writing skill will take you to the next professional level much faster than you imagined of. 2. Excellent communication Communication is an essential life skill. Whether you are at home, school, college, office or anywhere, you will require to communicate with others. Effective communication skill becomes more crucial when you start working for an establishment. You would need to communicate effectively, to convey what you want to convey in a clear and precise manner. While at college, you can participate in debates, take up social causes where you need to communicate with different people, and get involved in organizing any college event. 3.   Independence The ability to think and do things independently is important whether you are in college or in life. This skill comes really handy while working in an organization, as you need to take a number of work related decisions every day. No doubt, there would be managers and seniors to deal with crucial business issues, but to solve day-to-day work problems you need to decide what would be best course of action to tackle a problem. While at college, you can start taking few non-critical decisions. 4.   Multi-tasking ability Even in college you need to work on multiple tasks and juggle between different priorities. Multi-tasking is an important skill which is great to have to work in an office environment. Today, most of the business houses run with limited number of employees, so an individual with multi-tasking ability becomes handy in running different operations in an organizations. 5.   Getting along with people The art of getting along with different people to accomplish a wide variety of tasks is a critical skill. No organization can be runned by a single person, employees need to work in coordination with other team members or people from other teams, to achieve set business goals. In fact, people who have excellent interpersonal skill are in great demand. Most of the organizations want people who can maintain a good relationship with the clients and with the team. People who are good at getting along with people generally have great people management skills. 6.   Time management Time management is yet another very critical skill every student must develop while in college. We all have been doing some sort of time management since our school days when we need to plan and adjust our time to do various activities - classes, projects, extracurricular activities, tuitions and others. Time management is essential to achieve success in life because it will help you to accomplish necessary tasks within a limited time. This skill becomes even more critical in an organizational set up where employees need to meet project deadline on a regular basis. 7.   Emotional IQ Emotions plays a huge role in any social interaction whether you are in college or a workplace. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability to understand your emotions as well as of those people around you or with whom you interact. People with higher EI are better at dealing with people and managing workplace relationship more effectively. While you are in college learn to increase your social skills, empathy, self-awareness, motivation and self-regulation. Developing your EI while studying in college, will help you go a long way to deal with people better. Looking to develop any life skills? Post your needs on UrbanPro.