JOB SPECIAL ..........Millennials Will Need Soft Skills to Get Ahead

Millennials Will Need Soft Skills to Get Ahead  Ability to prioritise work, a positive attitude & teamwork are most important  In today’s workplace, employees need to do more than fulfill their job description and develop intangible soft skills. Since it’s easy for companies to find people with the right hard skills, they are hiring more for cultural fit than work performance. In a new study in partnership with American Express, over 60% of managers agreed that soft skills were the most important when evaluating an employee’s performance, followed by 32% citing hard skills and only 7% social media skills. When breaking down which soft skills were most important, managers chose the ability to prioritise work, having a positive attitude, and teamwork skills as their top three requirements for management roles. Ever since the economy tanked, there’s been pressure on employees to do more with less and be more productive. Being able to prioritise work is critical because you have to hit deadlines and deliver results if you want to push yourself — and your company — forward. Employees who are well organised and dependable will far exceed those who aren’t. “It’s about people trusting that you can do stuff, not just about getting stuff done,” says Bonni Simi, vice president of talent for JetBlue. Having a positive attitude, even if you’re not passionate about what you do, will make your co-workers want to work with you. When you have a bad attitude, it hurts your performance. “You can have the smartest person in the world working for you, but if that person isn’t nice, the impact of their overall ability is diminished,” says Carrie Corbin, associate director of strategic staffing & talent attraction at AT&T. Soft skills can’t easily be learned, they need to be developed over time. The big challenge for millennial workers is that they have weaker soft skills than older generations, who expect face-time and teamwork from them. Millennials have spent too much time with their collective noses buried in their iPhones and Facebook pages. James Wisdom, an executive at Aflac, hired an intern based on his technical expertise and no-nonsense style. James started hearing employees describing him as arrogant and unhelpful. “He didn’t have the emotional intelligence to detect that he was offending people,” said James. Millennials should get feedback on their soft skills from the people they work with. If you want to be an employee that stands out, gets noticed, and gets promoted, you’re going to have to develop soft skills. There’s no way around it.     FUNNY  BUSINESS JOB SEARCH JARGON Competitive Salary: We remain competitive by paying less than our competitors Flexible Hours: Work 55 hours; get paid for 37.5 Good Communication Skills: Management communicates, you listen, figure out what they want you to do DAN SCHAWBEL Bloomberg Businessweek ET130906