External relations director skills for your resume and career

I know that "soft skills" is commonly used, but I'm not a fan of the term. I think it implies that some of these skills are "soft" or "easy" or "unimportant." They aren't. In many ways, so-called "soft skills" - things like interpersonal communication skills - can be among the most important skills for any worker. This is especially the case in communication-related fields, where there is an expectation that human interaction - both in-person and mediated - is important. This is true with leadership skills and presentation/speaking skills.

Having the ability to write well is important in most knowledge-based fields today. It is especially critical in any communication-related field of job specialization. Otherwise, the specific technical skills are important variations between the particular company and/or job expectations. Some fields use proprietary software that one typically learns about once one starts the job. Some fields require media production competencies - related to basic video production, audio production, imaging or photography, or even web design/management. The important thing is to develop a general competency with technology - and to learn how to learn. That allows you to pivot to develop new skills in different situations and roles.

Well, first, if you have the means/finances to take a full year off, I commend you. My advice would be to immerse yourself in the use of technology and social media. Every company is always looking for good PR and a good "vibe." So, if you're taking a gap year, I would recommend using that time not to figure out what you want to do, but rather to hone the thing(s) that you're already good at and make them work for you.

The pandemic rushed the transition to virtual work, but this transition has been happening for at least 20 years. I suspect that the pandemic will have lasting effects on how 2020 graduates work. That is, I suspect new work habits and routines from the pandemic may persist well past when the pandemic is over. I had a virtual meeting with 25 colleagues on Zoom last week. In normal years past, we would spend $15,000-$25,000 to get together at a hotel for two days and work together. This year we did "pre-meetings" with small groups over 2 weeks, then a 4-hour meeting with the whole 25-person team. COVID forced this on us, but, we will absolutely use virtual tools more in the future because of it. Also, the value of social skills has long been on the rise. In some of my research on organizational teams, we discussed how the changing nature of work has increased the need for collaborative skills, AKA soft skills. In a hugely impactful article in a top economics journal, David Deming at Harvard University found that the labor market increasingly rewards social skills. He showed that, between 1980 and 2012, jobs requiring high skills levels of social interaction grew by 12 percentage points as a share of the U.S. labor force. Math-intensive, but less social, jobs-including many STEM occupations-shrank by 3.3 percentage points over the same period (The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market, David Deming, 2017, The Quarterly Journal of Economics). This is remarkable because it's during the PC and internet explosion. The rise of tech jobs, the information (read 'Data') age, and emphasis on STEM! For us social scientists, it makes perfect sense: the world of work increasingly demands social skills, like teamwork, collaboration and negotiating. This is a major trend in the world of work.