How to have a great day at work: Reset, reinvent and soft skill up

How many jobs have you had? And furthermore, how many do you envisage having in your lifetime? Historically the average worker has had about 12 but current predictions are actually more like  20-30 and many of those don’t even exist yet. 

This advancement, coupled with the incessant talk of AI, it’s fair to say the future of work could be seen as a little scary right now. But the good news is that you could be more prepared to navigate these changes more than you think. Dr Michelle Weise advises companies and individuals on more successful and longer careers and she explains that this starts with recognising and being able to highlight human skills.

On most CVS we talk almost exclusively about hard skills. These are of course different in every industry, but for example, they could be coding, editing, budgeting, you get the idea. We focus on the length of time and depth of knowledge practising these hard skills above everything else. 

Human skills, however, are things like adaptability, collaboration, judgement, and mediating difficult situations; they don’t show up often on a CV in a literal sense, but these are the skills predicted to last the long haul.

If you’re struggling to know what yours are, the best way is to draw a timeline of the jobs you’ve had, even include some of your out-of-work personal skills and pastimes, like being a caregiver or doing a specific sport, then list as many human skills you can think come out of those positions. 

By doing this you will be able to start to spot patterns because these magic so-called soft skills are the ones that are deeply transferrable and will future-proof your working life. You’re looking for repeated examples of skills like patience, empathy, evidence of crisis management, communicating in chaos; these all give an employer confidence you are the kind of person who could guide teams through restructures, design human-centred products or services. 

Spotting these human skills will also make moving from one area to another far more do-able, especially if you do your research and translate those skills into the specific language of a new employer. Because in different industries they can have vastly different meanings.

For example, if you’re thinking of moving from marketing, where strong communication skills may mean branding or storytelling, to behavioural health which might mean counselling or crisis management – transferring these skills is totally possible, but it’s up to you to become their translator. 

In this job environment, look for areas where you feel most uncomfortable – a knowledge gap you have, a promotion someone gets, a transfer into another department, all generally a sign of where you need to place focus attention to further develop your soft skills. 

Finally, in the pursuit of future-proofing your career, pay serious attention to organisations that are interested in developing your talent and career as much as you are. Companies differ wildly on this one and most companies, especially larger ones, have a long way to go to be able to recognise human development and help forge new career paths based on vital soft skills. 

A good place to check is LinkedIn and see how many of your peers have been promoted. Ask your boss (better still at interview stage) if they have clear roadmaps for internal advancement and development. The ideal is an employer who can spot human skills and be excited by what new talent can offer and the wherewithal to develop and cultivate it. 

Thinking about the future of work like this is exciting and if you are wide open to new experiences so many more possibilities will come your way. With retirement ages being set older and older, you are going to be working longer and longer over a lifetime and by looking at it differently, you just might be more prepared for that than you think.

Nicola Elliott is the founder of the wellness brand NEOM, and her book, ‘The Four Ways to Wellbeing: Better Sleep. Less Stress. More Energy. Mood Boost’ is published by Penguin