Five Soft Skills You Develop at University

Hopefully by now, you’ve gotten used to managing your money and paying rent and utility bills, as well as budgeting for food, drink and nights out. If you’ve had a role on a society committee, you may have been responsible for handling even larger sums of money.

All of this is excellent money management experience, which shows you are someone responsible and trustworthy. This is helpful even if the job you’re applying for doesn’t require you to handle money directly, as it demonstrates positive character traits which will impress employers.

If you’ve become heavily involved in extra-curricular activities while at university, or have a part-time job, this division of your time between multiple things shows you know how to manage your workload. Employers will always value employees who can juggle multiple commitments.

Even if you were too focused on your studies for societies or part-time work, your ability to meet deadline after deadline is also a testament to your time management skills.

During your studies, you will have faced many problems that just seemed impossible at first. Whether it was a difficult essay question or mathematical problem, you will have had to think outside the box, approach the problem from new angles, and maybe carry out some more research.

This is exactly what employers want from their employees if a project stops running smoothly. They want you to be able to take the initiative, so be sure to have a couple of examples of when you overcame difficult problems if you are called for an interview.

No one’s university work is perfect, and you’ll have received plenty of constructive criticism from tutors and peers over the duration of your degree. Employers want employees who are capable of taking constructive criticism and using what they’ve been told to improve their own work. This might seem like an odd soft skill as it’s not one you can easily demonstrate, but it’s worth having stories you can tell in job interviews of occasions when you were able to use constructive criticism to improve your work.

Oliver Hurcum writes for Inspiring Interns, which specialises in sourcing candidates for internships. To browse our graduate jobs London listings, visit our website.