Soft skills are intangible but important qualities that enable you to work and interact with the people around you effectively.
To secure (and keep) a job, you typically need to possess a repertoire of technical skills. However, today at the workplace, just having hard skills will not be enough. In order to thrive, especially in a high-growth startup, you need to have and show skills beyond your technical skills; the so-called “soft skills”.
Here are 5 soft skills that help people thrive in a startup environment:
✅ Ability to work and excel in ‘organised chaos’ — The company is still trying to find its grooves, put processes and practices in place that scale and age well. For this experiments and innovation are crucial. The ideal team member not only understands this well, but also helps spot and fix areas of improvement.
✅ Going the extra mile — In a startup, there is a never-ending list of things to be done, and these things usually need to be handled by very few people. So it’s key that everyone who works in the company contributes on several levels.
✅ Work as a team — When you’re working at a startup, and you’re part of building something new, you cannot work in silo, you work as a team towards a shared vision and mission that goes beyond one self. This is extremely powerful, to make everyone feel part of the team.
✅ Take chances. Learn. Keep exploring. — Building a startup is hard. Almost everything you do is the “first time”, which means that you’re constantly in exploration mode. A great startup employee thrives in this sort of environment, sees opportunities where others see problems, and dares to try and learn from the outcome.
✅ It’s not just a ‘job’, it’s an opportunity to build a career — Working in a startup means multi-tasking with minimal resources. It requires a growth mindset, and a curiosity for constant learning and development. Great startup employees don’t see their role as a “job.” They see it as an opportunity to continue to improve their skills, master their craft, grow in their field, and become leaders in their industry.
