When you go for a new job interview, your interviewers are looking at your resume, ticking off the requirements for the position: College degree? Check. Years experience? Check. Specific technical skills? Check. But during an interview, the hiring team is also trying to assess what type of a worker you are. They ask pointed questions about times you were faced with a difficult problem, met a challenging goal, or when you worked as part of a team.
A recent CareerBuilder survey from the spring of 2014 aimed to find out what specific "soft skills" employers are looking for -- the things that you can't measure with years of experience or advanced degrees. Hard skills are those tangible skills and responsibilities like computer certifications or years of experience in a specific environment that can be quantified. Soft skills are just the opposite -- these skills fall mostly in the realm of one's personality and character.
CareerBuilder sampled 2,140 hiring managers and human resource personnel and discovered that 77 percent feel soft skills are just as important for a job candidate to have as hard skills. Sixteen percent even felt that soft skills were MORE important. These are numbers to consider -- not only if you are in the market for a new job - but also if you are looking to make an impact in your present position. These skills are important indicators of how you can perform your job better.
All these skills are transferable across industry types and job descriptions.
In credit and collections, every single one of the ten skills listed above impacts your productivity and work quality. Credit and collections departments are complex environments where many cogs keep the machine functioning. If you aren't operating at the same level as the rest of the team, efficiency goes down the drain fast. Managers depend on their staff to move orders through the approval queue and to ensure that collections are received in a timely fashion.
In turn, the staff must depend on other contributors to the order-to-cash process to not cause a backlog of order processing or payments. Working under pressure is a given in that you are responsible for cash flow; one major default or a general slowdown of payments at the wrong time can cause major stress to the organization as a whole. Moreover, collectors need to be excellent communicators to work with clients and vendors in order to get paid.
So what do you do with this information if you already have a job? Knowing what your managers are looking for in their employees beyond the obvious technical skills will help you keep them happy. Doesn't everyone want a happy manager? These insights will also help you stay on top of your game and be the best candidate when it's time for bonuses or internal advancement opportunities. A strong work ethic should be a no-brainer. Hopefully, we can all claim to be dependable employees with a positive attitude who can work well with others and manage multiple projects at one time. But let's be realistic: Very few probably excel naturally at all 10 items on this list.
Some things, like being a team player or having the ability to be flexible can be hard for some personality types. Some people simply like their set routines, or maybe working alone and that's OK. If this is you, it's important to recognize that these may be weak areas as an employee. You need to teach yourself to assess situations and decide when you really do need to put up with fellow employees on a project or be more flexible in your day-to-day routine. It doesn't mean you have to become the team captain, but recognizing your weakness and working to overcome it will be noticed by your managers and applauded.
The same holds true for the other soft skills -- if you see any areas that are not your strongest characteristics, you can work towards making those things better. Maybe it's a new organizational system that will help you keep up-to-date on multiple deadlines. In credit and collections, this is huge when you may have multiple large-dollar value clients with approaching due dates as well as past due items to keep track of. Maybe it's having your coffee at home so you don't walk in as such a grump leaving everyone you meet with a less than stellar first impression each day. Sometimes it's the confidence to speak up when you suspect something isn't being done right or could be done differently at a greater advantage to the whole credit and collections process.
It's probably easier to take a class or join a professional organization and immediately add those credentials to your resume. Soft skills don't work that way and you really do need to make a point to work on these skills yourself. Find your weak points and make them stronger and you will be a more well-rounded and desirable employee for your efforts.
