Of the hundreds of interviews an employer/recruiter conducts, there are basic skills and characteristics that they look for in a successful applicant/employee.

• Learning To Learn
Knowing how to learn is the foundation for all future success. With this skill, you can achieve competency in all other areas. Many employers require employees to shift between jobs and responsibilities, which places a premium on your ability to absorb, process, and apply new information quickly and effectively.

• Reading, Writing, and Computation
Today, as manual labor is increasingly being replace by automation, basic academic skills are becoming vital to workplace survival. Employers cannot compete successfully without a workforce that has the sound basic academic skills of reading, writing and computation (arithmetic). As an employee, your inability to handle these basic skills could cost you your livelihood.

• Listening and Oral Communication
On the job, you must be able to communicate procedures, information and problems effectively. You may be asked to defend your position and you are always required to listen.

• Problem Solving and Creative Thinking
An organization’s ability to achieve its strategic objective often depends on the problem solving and creative thinking skills of its workforce. Problem-solving skills include the ability to recognize and define problems, invent and implement solutions, and track and evaluate results. To do this, you need cognitive skills, group interaction skills, and problem-processing skills. That means you need to look at problems in new ways and invent new solutions both on your own and in a group.

• Self-Esteem, Motivation, and Goal Setting
An individual’s effectiveness in the workplace can be linked to positive self-esteem and motivation. A good self-image means you take pride in your work. Because when you believe in yourself, you are more likely to set goals and achieve them.

• Personal and Career Development
Employers want to hire those with a clear sense of where they want their lives/careers to go. They want those who have set goals and are willing to work toward them. They know that those with well-planned career goals are more likely to benefit from related training and to make more successful transitions to higher levels of responsibility.

• Interpersonal/Negotiation Skills and Leadership
The ability to work as part of a team has become increasingly important. Team building skills are important to meeting organizational goals and in adapting quickly to change. Skills such as judging appropriate behavior, coping with undesirable behavior in others, absorbing stress, dealing with uncertainty, inspiring confidence in others, sharing responsibility, and interacting easily with others are becoming increasingly important to employers. These skills allow people to successfully negotiate problems and solutions and more readily accept responsibility and leadership roles.

• Organizational Effectiveness and Leadership
An employee who can be an effective problem solver and team builder is of great value to an employer. Understanding how things can get done – and making things happen without undue disruption in operations – makes you a great asset to the company as well as a potential leader.