Clarity, Water Coolers, and Accountability: Eight Essential Corporate Skills for First Generation Professionals in 2024
“The superior person understands what is right; the inferior person understands what will sell.” - Confucius
As you begin your career as a first generation professional, the intentional curation of certain skills will propel you forward. As you develop comfort in the performance of your daily duties, you can begin to focus on understanding certain dynamics and honing meaningful task-based abilities. In this Article, we discuss eight on-trend YP skills that employers are seeking in 2024.
For more essential skills, check out Expanding Your Career Repertoire: Meaningful Soft Skills for Young Professionals in 2023
Writing with Clarity
One of the most popular soft skills are “communication skills.” More specifically for 2024, employers are looking for employees who can effectively translate their understandings into digestable communications (bite size segments, a well-structured email, a quick background breakdown, etc.) that can be easily transferred between company stakeholders. Today’s young professionals can provide value by absorbing information within their area of expertise and then distilling such information down to widely-understood (or “layperson”) summaries, results, or reports. Over time, this will become a meaningful professional habit, helping you build a reputation as both knowledgable and approachable.
curiousity and questions
As a young professional, you will be exposed to new processes, business concepts, and corporate matters (as well as professional issues). For many first generation professionals, our standard for performance is very high, since we may be used to a high level of personal responsibility. As with life, you can only be expected to know what you’ve already seen; maintain a healthy curiosity throughout your first role. This will help you not only get the lay of the land, but also help you determine a resolution process, including to whom to reach out with questions.
When faced with an unbefore-handled matter, determine your questions. There are always the basics of who, what, where, when, and why, but also think about the stakeholders of your decision or the process to resolution. Consider asking your manager or mentor for historical watch-outs or pitfalls within the matter to determine if you should be incorporating those considerations in your questioning.
As you develop more familiarity with the topic or process, you will see the topic or process follow through to completion more consistently. Many of your questions will be informed by the end result: what were the consequences of your fact-finding? Should you have asked about X? Should you have reached out to Y regarding a piece of information? Use these realizations to hone your questions in the future.
For more advice on asking meaningful questions, check out Ask and You Will Receive: 5 Ways to Ask More Effective Questions in the Workplace
Water Cooler Vibes: Managing personalities
Another essential skill: people management. In your first role, you will likely not be expected to manage others from a leadership standpoint, but you WILL be expected to play nice in the sandbox with your new coworkers. While (hopefully) the majority of your new officemates will be helpful and generous with their information, you may run into the token person with whom you just don’t get along. Whether this is a conflict in personality, work style, work pace, or ambitions, always remember that it is not your responsibility to make everyone like you, especially if they are determined not to do so. Some conflict management tactics to consider could be setting a 15 minute meeting with that person to find the root of the issue by asking direct, yet respectful, questions; determine which tasks or projects to which this person is well-suited (or not well suited) and tailor your involvement accordingly; or simply avoid this person. For the sake of your sanity in a new role, it may truly be best to remove yourself from potential interaction. If avoidance is not an option, stay strong in your position and keep your manager in the loop, if appropriate.
Improve your Outlook: Calendar management
Ah, technology, our bestie. One often-overlooked corporate skill is the effective leveraging of office tech: most importantly, your calendar management tools. Take some time to dig through your calendar’s capabilities and how best to incorporate them based on your work style. Some common uses are blocking time for specific tasks, tracking time (especially if you have billable time), and focus time to concentrate on administrative tasks.
Also, be sure to understand the basic functions: forwarding a meeting invite, creating an email group, cross referencing multiple calendars, setting up reminders, and even tracking due dates and task status for other teammates.
Mea culpa: Accountability vs reliability
Speaking of accountability, learning accountability is a skill. It is easy to get wrapped up in our own day to day and let collaboration become a secondary priority.
However, while learning and operating in a silo may develop your own skills, you will only advance if you can show you can work well with others. The easiest way to do so is to respect the tasks given to you by your managers and especially by your peers (when appropriate - don’t let people overload you simply because you’re new or young) and execute to the best of your ability.
Reliability is demonstrated by consistently showing up for your team by producing good work, on time.
Accountability is demonstrated by how you react when you are not reliable. Making mistakes is understandable, but you want to develop a habit of owning your own, both good and bad.
Basic Business competencies
You do not need to have an MBA to understand the basics of your business. With your managers blessing (especially if you are brand new to your role), try to set a short amount of time aside (block that calendar!) for business acumen development. Easy resources for this continuous education include LinkedIn Learning courses, any internal educational tools offered by your company, or even YouTube videos or social media vignettes from credible educators/influencers. You can also reach out to your company’s leaders to see if they are willing to meet with you quarterly to ask questions about your company’s industry position and strengths/weaknesses in the market. Demonstrating an interest in your company or business will show your willingness to grow with the company long-term.
For more information about basic business language, check out our FGPM Article on Learning the Lingo.
Conclusion
As you start to develop your corporate toolkit, you will realize that, while the effective performance of your duties will establish you as a good employee, inter-personal, organizational, and written skills will present you as a leader. However, you will not be responsible for developing all of these skills, all at once; consider metering this development over time and incorporate them into your goal-setting.
Citations
Official, Her Circle. “Mastering Essential Business Skills: A Comprehensive Guide.” LinkedIn, 1 Feb. 2024, www.linkedin.com/pulse/mastering-essential-business-skills-comprehensive-guide-jkzte/?trk=article-ssr-frontend-pulse_more-articles_related-content-card.
Peek, Sean. “12 Business Skills You Need to Master.” Business.Com/Careers, 13 Apr. 2023, www.business.com/articles/12-business-skills-you-need-to-master/.
Perry, Elizabeth. “10 Essential Business Skills That Make an Impact on Your Career.” BetterUp, 29 Aug. 2023, www.betterup.com/blog/business-skills.
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