6 Tips to Developing an In-Demand Skill Set

How economy-proof is your skill set? Companies are cutting salaries and jobs due to rising costs, but you still need a job to pay the bills. What you need to stay employed is an in-demand skill set.

Workers with in-demand skill sets are snapped up by another company if they are laid off, or they pivot with ease into a new industry. These are the perks of an in-demand skill set: these skills ensure a stable income. To stay in demand, you’ll want to continuously improve on this skill set which includes the following expertise.

Tip 1 Speaking Skills

The ability to capture an audience and establish credibility depends on your speaking skills. Clarity and confidence are important on the job for people to understand you and believe what you say. To develop your speaking skills, work on the following:

Time and record yourself speaking about one topic for one to three minutes. Listen to the recording. Does your speech have a beginning, middle, and end? Do you speak smoothly, or fill your pauses with ums and uhs?
Watch videos about public speaking and try to implement a tip into your speaking practice. For example, focus on the volume and pitch of your voice one day, and focus on your vocabulary use for an impromptu speech on another day.
Create a list of job interview questions, write out your answers in point form, and then practice your answers until you’re confident you can ace your next job interview.
Practice giving presentations at home to sound more confident when you present at work meetings.

Tip 2 Writing Skills

Writing skills are just as important as speaking skills. The difference is you have more time to think about what you want to say. As a result, there is more expectation that you’ll write with better grammar and organization. Spelling and punctuation mistakes suggest a lack of care and professionalism. To improve your writing skills, work on the following:

Copy a piece of writing that is in the style that you want to learn. By copying it as practice, your brain learns that writing style.
Practice writing each day, for a few minutes each day. Use editing apps to review and find suggestions for improving your writing.
Make a list of your common offenders, such as misspelled words or bad grammar, and check that your writing doesn’t have these mistakes.
Outline your ideas to organize your thoughts before writing your email or report.
Make a habit of completing writing tasks ahead of schedule so you have enough time to take a break. Then return to your task and re-read your writing with fresh eyes. You will have a better chance of catching your own mistakes.

Tip 3 Tech Skills

Tech skills are vital to survival in the modern world of work. Fortunately, it’s easy to find videos on YouTube, LinkedIn, and other applications and platforms to teach you the skills you need. If your co-worker or company IT department hasn’t answered your tech question, you can educate yourself on whatever technology you use. To improve your tech skills, try the following:

Download free versions of applications or software to learn how to use them if you’re looking for a job. After practicing how to use these applications, you can add them to your resume.
Create a portfolio of work using these applications or software. For example, if you’re looking for a graphic design job, create a brochure using Canva. Add these projects to your resume.
Challenge yourself to learn how to use technology on the job. Learn to host an online meeting for twenty participants. Learn how to present the statistics using Excel, even though you haven’t used Excel’s advanced functions before.
Volunteer to take on a project to practice using a type of technology. For example, take the lead on moving company tasks to a management tool such as Click Up.

Tip 4 Leadership Skills

Career advancement is difficult without leadership skills. Empathy and understanding the people you work with, and being clear and organized about when you want something done are both in-demand skills. Here are ways to improve your leadership skills:

Volunteer to take the lead for a project, even if it is a project for a team of one. Set your own project goals and deadlines. Set milestones for reporting updates to your supervisor and demonstrate that you can complete a project on time without supervision.
Step up to lead a team for a project for which you already have a lot of experience. If you already have the skills for a similar project, you already have the confidence. Now your next goal is to prove you can help your team complete that project together.
Take the initiative to anticipate what needs completion. Suggest ways to improve current policies.

Tip 5 Sales Skills

Sales skills are crucial. You want to sell an interviewer on hiring you. You want to sell your boss on giving you a raise. Sales involve much more than money exchanged for a product or service. Here are ways to improve your sales skills:

Read books and watch videos about sales tips and techniques. Understand the psychology behind why some sales techniques are effective.
Practice mock job interviews if you are looking for a job. Focus on how you speak, your tone of voice, and enunciation. Do you sound confident? Does your body language suggest confidence?
Do your research. What does your audience want? If you want to ask for a raise, research what skills are valued in your industry. Look into your company’s goals for the coming year. Then show how your skills can help the company achieve its goals and why you deserve your value.

Tip 6 Language Skills

Language skills are highly valued, whether you’re monolingual or you’re a polyglot. Learning a language is a way to connect with and better understand other cultures. If you have a strong command of a language, you can be a professional writer, speaker, or translator. Here are ways to improve your language skills:

Practice a language with a coworker during lunch. Learn new words and learn about a culture at the same time.
Take classes or lessons online, with a class, or with a tutor, until you can work as a writer, editor, or translator.
Practice as a volunteer translator or volunteer at work until you have more experience for critical situations, such as translating to a client at your company.

Key Takeaways

Many skills are transferable from one career or industry to another. In times of economic hardship, these skills will continue to find you steady work. Strong speaking, writing, leadership, and tech skills are always in high demand. Can you think of any other transferrable, high-demand skills? Comment below!

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Why Modifiers are Important: Humor and Horror

What if you want to make an innocent comment only to sound like a weirdo instead? Jumbling up the order of your words can create some awkward misunderstandings.

Misplaced modifiers are words, phrases, or clauses that have been separated from the word it describes. These misplaced modifiers can change the meaning of what you intend to say.

Here are some examples of how to fix misplaced modifiers to add some humor and horror to your day. Just remember to check your own writing to make sure you’re not accidentally creating these types of mistakes!

Writing Tip 1: Identify what you’re describing

Where you place your words matters. Otherwise, you could be describing the wrong object. In the following example, ask yourself some critical questions. Who has a camera? Who is in the tree?

Move the description closer to the word the description is about, unless you actually saw a frog that owns a camera.

We saw a frog with a camera near the tree.

We used a camera to photograph a frog near the tree.

Writing Tip 2: Break your sentence into parts

If you break your sentence into smaller parts, you will have an easier time spotting any unintended meaning in your sentence. In the following sentence, you have three ideas: You noticed a dog. You were driving. You were listening to music.

The dog you observed didn’t have any special talents. It wasn’t driving anywhere. Make sure you move the description closer to what you’re describing to clarify any misunderstandings.

I noticed a dog driving down the street while listening to music.

I was driving down the street while listening to music when I noticed a dog.

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

Writing Tip 3: Rearrange the words

Clarify the meaning of your sentence in one or two easy steps. Just rearrange the order of the words.

Re-ordering your words can avoid awkward misunderstandings. After all, people don’t want to be put on dishes and offered as food.

They served cake to our family on fancy plates.

They served cake on fancy plates to our family.

Writing Tip 4: Flip the sentence around

You can rewrite your sentence by putting the last part of the sentence first. In this example, flipping your sentence around makes your meaning clearer. You also avoid animating some inanimate objects, and prevent food from walking around your house.

She smelled the soup opening the door to the dining room.

Opening the door to the dining room, she smelled the soup.

Writing Tip 5: Read your work out loud

It’s not easy to look at your own writing objectively, especially if you’re writing a report or email that needs completion right away. Your words sound clear to you, but could have a different meaning to someone else.

If you can, read your work out loud, or have an app read your work out loud. You may hear what your words sound like to someone else just by listening to where you pause, or where you emphasize your words.

Misplaced modifiers sound bizarre and funny when you describe the wrong word. Ask yourself if it makes sense to watch buildings grow out of mobile phones. It might be time to rewrite that sentence if the logic seems a bit off.

We watched a house getting built on my smartphone.

On my smartphone, we watched a house getting built.

Key Takeaways

The placement of your words matters. How you phrase your ideas can make the difference between clear writing and unintended confusion. Always take an extra moment to check your work.

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Setting Goals, Welcoming Spring

Welcome, spring!

Flowers are blooming and waking up from winter, nature’s signal that it’s time to assess where we are and where we want to be. Take a moment to assess where you’ve come from and where you want to go.

What are your personal goals for the coming months? It can be setting your fitness goals and deciding what to tidy up for spring cleaning.

What are your professional goals? Do you want to learn a new skill? Get a promotion?

For business owners, we are nearing the end of the first quarter. It’s the perfect time to assess what we’ve achieved during the first three months of the year. Then set goals for the next quarter.

What are your goals for spring?

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6 Steps to Leaving Your Comfort Zone

Here’s the scary truth: leaving your comfort zone is HARD. You’re living your nightmare in real life. But if you don’t take the first steps to challenge yourself or allow yourself to feel vulnerable, you will never leave your comfort zone. When you leave your comfort zone, you grow. You’ll open yourself to new experiences and opportunities. The crucial moment is to take that first step.

1 Identify your comfort zone

To leave your comfort zone, you need to identify the boundaries of your comfort zone. Your comfort zone is where you feel safe, surrounded by what’s familiar to you. For example, if you don’t feel comfortable giving presentations to a group, you may feel more secure sitting in the audience. If the thought of traveling to a new city scares you, you’ll feel more relaxed watching a show about the place you want to visit.

In your comfort zone, you don’t have to take risks or face challenges. You don’t have anything to cross off your bucket list. Your major challenges and goals are those that you’ve achieved before. After you find the outer boundaries of your comfort zone, you’ll know when you’re about to step outside of it.

2 Set goals

When you’re ready to leave your comfort zone, set goals, starting with one small goal to get you started. Make sure that it is realistic and challenges you. If you fear public speaking, making a speech in front of 500 people is not a realistic first goal. The gap between where you are now and where you want to be is too wide.

Small steps are easier to achieve. Your goal gives you direction and purpose and can help you stay motivated when things get tough. But you need to first break your goal into manageable steps, and work on just one step at a time. Begin with a well-practiced speech to a picture or toys in a room. They are a captive audience. Join groups such as Toastmasters, which is a supportive group that works on speaking skills.

3 Face your fears

After you get your goal or goals, you will face the hardest part: facing your fears. Planning is easy. Working on the plan is hard, which is why working on conquering your fears one small step at a time is so important.

Before speaking in front of an audience of strangers, practice speaking in front of supportive peers. By repeatedly putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation, you will slowly become comfortable. People who speak to an audience of thousands didn’t become professionals at public speaking overnight.

4 Welcome change

Change is scary. It’s why most people take the same route to work or dine at the same restaurants and avoid new types of cuisine. Leaving your comfort zone means embracing the unknown. When you are open-minded, you’ll try new things and explore new places. The results can be exciting.

When you challenge your public speaking skills, you’ll discover a confidence you didn’t know you had. In turn, this confidence will give you the confidence to leave your comfort zone for something new in the future.

5 Surround yourself with supportive people

Facing challenges alone can be overwhelming. Having a support system can make a big difference in your self improvement. These people include friends and family, even coworkers.

When making a presentation at work, you can ask supportive coworkers to give you feedback o your speaking skills. Join a group with similar goals to provide you with an encouraging environment to grow and get advice from people who have been where you are now.

6 Celebrate your successes

Remember to celebrate your successes at each step, not just when you have accomplished your goal. Each step to achieving your goal is equally important.

After giving your first speech to five friendly faces, celebrate what you’ve achieved. After you’ve given your first major presentation to a new client, reward yourself.

Key Takeaways

Leaving your comfort zone is not easy. People love to be where they are comfortable because it is safe. But safe doesn’t bring you new experiences or help you grow as a person. You don’t develop new skills by repeating what you’ve done before. To leave your comfort zone, you need to take that first small step.

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Celebrating Women’s Day

International Women’s Day celebrates the economic, social, political, and cultural achievements of women. This day has been observed as early in history as 1909. It’s a day that is celebrated in many countries around the world.

In recognition of the achievements of women in business and women who are entrepreneurs, I’m resharing this blog about why women should be entrepreneurs. Happy reading!