Introduction to Professional Skills for Career Readiness

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Being a good communicator is an essential skill for our modern world. Whether it’s verbal or written, communication requires a great deal of intentionality. You might think that communication is mostly what you say, but the truth is listening is a very important part of communication. But effective listening doesn’t just happen. It takes practice and focus.

Before you speak, you should always use the THINK acronym to judge what you’re about to say. T. Is it true? H. Is it helpful? I. Is it inspiring? N. Is it necessary? K. Is it kind? Giving thought to what you’ll say before you begin to speak will make your communication clearer and more succinct.

You’ll also want to give careful thought to your tone. How you say what you choose to say matters. And remember, even nonverbal cues like your body language play a role in effective, authentic communication.

So I’m Veronica. I graduated from the University of Florida in 2016 and then, most recently, graduated from the University of Oxford in September 2020. I am currently at New York Life Insurance. And my role there is I work on the performance analytics team in the marketing section of the organization, doing reporting and analysis on our targeted marketing programs.

I’m Gene Mance. I graduated in December of 2018 from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. I live here in Dallas, Texas. I work for AT&T corporate as an industry solutions consultant.

I’m Jenna Beckler. I am currently working at Nestle USA in Arlington, Virginia. I’m an HR operation specialist right now. I’ve been that for about three years. And I graduated in 2018, or– yeah 2018 from Tennessee Tech University with a bachelor’s in human resources as well.

So hello. My name is Sevag Alexanian. I’m currently working at LinkedIn. It’s about to be three years in July. And my role is a relationship manager for our product, LinkedIn Learning. A relationship manager is essentially an account management role– so within the sales function. And LinkedIn Learning is an e-learning platform where I help support our clients and grow their professional development resources for their employees.

I graduated in 2018 from Cal State University, Northridge. And I majored in marketing [INAUDIBLE]

When I was thinking about this question, it was more toward the latter end of our college experience, where you see your friends start to get jobs or you know where alumni have been and you start to think that this is what you should want. So I know that for me, in– I graduated my degree in public relations. I was so confident that I did not want to join an agency and saw all of my friends going agency-side and then ended up getting a job at an agency, which I loved, and I’m so happy I did.

But I think I’m happy to say I joined it for the right reasons. But I think that it was one of those things that I always second-guessed my decision of whether or not I joined because I wanted to or whether or not it was just the path that was laid out for me. So I think being able to, like you said, Sevag, knowing yourself and knowing what you want to do and being able to make those decisions sometimes is a little bit difficult.

So I think there’s a lot of weight that’s put on us, especially when we’re first starting out in college. From day one, the expectation is that we’ve chosen a major and then, within that major, you can assume that there is a number of career paths that that comes with. And a lot of times, it’s a matter of what is your passion, follow that passion, and then, of course, make that into a career.

And I think that the thing that makes that so difficult is when you’re 17, 18, figuring out where you’re going to go to school, what’s going to be your degree of choice, you still have a lot that you need to figure out. You’re still learning about yourself, learning about your likes, your dislikes. So I think that puts a lot of pressure on the student. And then eventually, maybe two years into your college career, you’ve already completed so many courses and units that even if you’re starting to want to do something else, at that point, you don’t want to stay an undergrad for any longer.

So it ends up becoming this pretty stressful experience for those, especially, that haven’t been lucky to figure out their passion, figure out what it is exactly that they want to do. So I think that ends up creating this dynamic that ends up being a lot more– holding a lot more weight than, possibly, it should for college students.