Career Advice for Students
How to Improve Interpersonal Skills
Step 1: Improve Your Emotional Intelligence
First, you need to develop emotional intelligence, which is the foundation of interpersonal skills. Emotional intelligence was coined in 1990 by psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer and has since been expanded on by Daniel Goleman.
Essentially, emotional intelligence is the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behaviour, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one’s goal(s).
As you can see emotional intelligence is broken up into two groups – personal skills (how do we manage ourselves) and social skills (how do we handle relationships).
Your goal as a student is to learn about, develop and harness as many of these skill groups as possible.
Step 2: Utilise the 7 C’s of Communication
So, if you haven’t learned about them already, the seven C’s of communication is a list of principles for written and spoken communications to ensure that they are effective.
The seven C’s are: clear, correct, complete, concrete, concise, considered and courteous.
Step 3: Make use of neuro-linguistic programming models to achieve your goals and be more persuasive
According to NLP, successful people understand the language of the mind and how to use language to influence people. Here’s a short video on Neuro-Linguistic Programming and how it can benefit you.
Step 4: Gain better self-awareness through personality, motivation and values assessments
Complete various types of assessments to discover your values, interests, skills and personality and identify what career options match your strengths and weaknesses.
Many universities offer students the opportunity to take one through the university so speak with your advisor. If not, there are other options including:
Android Developer
An Android developer is a software developer who specialises in designing applications for the Android marketplace.
iOS Developer
An iOS developer is responsible for developing applications for mobile devices powered by Apple’s iOS operating system.
Cloud Engineer
Cloud engineers are responsible for performing the technical duties associated with cloud computing. This can involve anything from designing cloud software and systems to implementing and maintaining them.
Backend Software Developer
The back end of a website consists of a server, an application, and a database. A back-end developer builds and maintains the technology that powers those components which, together, enable the user-facing side of the website to even exist in the first place.
QA Engineer
Quality assurance engineers are responsible for assessing the quality of specifications and technical design documents in order to ensure timely, relevant and meaningful feedback. They are involved in planning and implementing strategies for quality management and testing.