Hey, guys. It's Chelsea from The Financial Diet. And this week's video is brought to you by  Lingoda. And I am coming to you from a place that is probably not very familiar to you if you watch this channel, and that is because I am not in my apartment. I'm not even in New York. Hell, I'm not even in America. I'm in France. Ha, ha, ha. As many of you guys have been probably following along, my husband has had some immigration issues this year. And we were separated for a while. But now we're together, and I'm here. But don't worry. I'll be back stateside soon enough. And today, whether you are on one side or the other of the Atlantic, I wanted to talk to you about some underrated job skills you probably already have. When you're hunting for a job which for many of us is the case this year, it can be easy to feel intimidated by all of the various terms and requirements that employers are often listing. Things like engaging, innovating, data driven, five-plus years experience can all feel like blockades between you and the job that you want. But before you fall into the black hole of intimidation, remember that the vast majority of skills you probably need are ones you either already have or could very much acquire. You may have never used a P&L management tool for example before. But that is by no means a reason to say you couldn't do it. And for example, if in the context of an interview you are asked if you know a specific piece of software that you may not personally know, it's always an option to say that you have not familiarized yourself with this particular piece of software but that you are familiar with xy and z things that are inherent to that software, the skills that it implies. For example, you may not know Photoshop. But you could have used other image-editing tools and are familiar with creating imagery for digital use. For many potential employers, it's not so much a specific tool. It's more the underlying skills beneath that tool and what it implies about your work. And being someone who is curious, eager, and quick to learn is an invaluable skill in every job. Because at the end of the day, even the perfect candidate isn't going to be proficient at everything. So much of the job hunt is about playing up the skills that you already have and that are often underrated even by the job seeker applying. So when you're heading into your next interview or application, here are a few under-the-radar skills you are going to want to hype up.

 Number one is thinking ahead. If you're the type of person who often thinks in terms of, well, this is good now but where will it be in a month, a year, et cetera, or who looks at a particular choice or solution and thinks about it in terms of its long-term sustainability, that is a huge asset. Many people are easily distracted by short-term wins and things that provide easy answers to immediate problems. But when you're able to think about something in terms of how it scales or how it can be sustainable long term, you are already demonstrating a higher level of thinking that many people tend not to click into. This is especially useful thinking for moving up any kind of corporate ladder because the longer-term thinkers tend to be rewarded by longer-term, bigger-scope projects.

Number two is your curiosity. One of the most valuable skills anyone can have is being a creative, curious, dynamic thinker. Being someone who is constantly looking beyond the scope of what their specific domain is who looks to see what the implications of one action might be on a completely different discipline or sector and who wants to understand things beyond just their rote day to day is someone who's going to be a very valuable person in any structure. It's so easy for people to get narrow laser focused on just the tasks they're given and recreating those tasks every day even if their formula doesn't necessarily make sense for the problem at hand. Being a nimble, curious thinker who can get beyond just the immediate day-to-day tasks means being much more adapted to solving unexpected problems.

Number three is being empathetic. Ultimately, in nearly every job you're going to do, how you communicate is going to be an enormous part of your success or failure at that job. And especially as you move up the ladder and potentially manage more people or are being hired into a position of management, being an empathetic communicator is the absolute key to getting the best out of people. If someone is constantly missing deadlines or not working to their normal level of quality for example, it could be easy for an unempathetic person to simply just write that person off as incompetent or lazy. But someone with more skill and empathy could easily start to get to the bottom of what the real issue is and hopefully find a much more solution-oriented next move. Communicating in a way that feels authentic rather than opportunistic is also a massive key to creating networks, to managing teams, to creating relationships around your industry, to sales, and basically every human-oriented element of the job. Someone who makes a person feel at ease, feel understood, and feel listened to is going to have an enormous advantage. You don't have to be BFFs with everyone at your office to be the kind of person who understands them and tries genuinely to put yourself in their position.

Number four is expressing yourself clearly. Now everyone is going to have a different level of skill when it comes to pure communication. And it's not fair to ask that everyone's going to be like a Winston Churchill-level orator. But one of the things you can actively work on is making sure that everything you say has a purpose and a value and communicates your intent clearly. Often people will get flustered in professional situations and simply talk too much. They fill up the space. They use a lot of filler words and often aren't even really necessarily conveying a point. Forcing yourself to constantly trim back what you're saying and making sure that everything you say is very action oriented is a great way to become quickly known as a thoughtful communicator who always has something valuable to say.

Number five is being polite. This one should be obvious, but it is shocking how rare of a skill politeness is when it comes to the professional world. Being the sort of person who remembers dates, who sends thank-you cards, who speaks in a polite, considerate, courteous way, who holds the door for people, who opens the elevator for people, being someone who genuinely carries themself with a level of manners and respect is frankly quite a rare thing. And people, including hiring managers, tend to remember the people who were polite, who were conscientious, who were courteous and who made them feel at ease because ultimately good manners isn't about showing off or being fake. It's about making the people around you feel their most comfortable. Even something as simple as asking how someone's doing and actually listening to their response can make a world of difference in how they perceive you.

Number six is knowing when to push back. Now I'll be honest that I've never particularly had the personality type of a pushover. If anything, I'm a little bit too pushy myself. But I know that for many people, being a pushover or in its more generous terminology being overly accommodating can be a real hurdle Not feeling like you're entitled to push back on something even when you know it's wrong can be a huge issue. And beyond just potentially saddling you with more work or an unfair responsibility or violating your boundaries, it can also cause other people in your team to lose respect for you or to not see you as the professional you are. Learning what battles are the right ones to pick but having a firm, thoughtful, and polite way of pushing back on something that is inappropriate is a key tool to earning the respect that you deserve and making sure that you're not constantly being saddled with things that are outside of your scope. For example, if you have a co-worker who is frequently emailing you late at night or on weekends, it is more than appropriate to write them a very polite email saying, I don't check my work email between this time and this time. So I worry that if you continue to send them at these times that I simply may not see them. And I don't want to miss them. If you wouldn't mind keeping your emails between this time and this time, I will be much more likely to always catch them. Of course, what you're really saying is, hey, asshole, stop emailing me at 11:30 at night. But you're doing it in a way that reads as professional. And of course, if you have to call out behavior that was just beyond the pale inappropriate or unfair, make sure that any time you are going to potentially surface an issue that you are arming yourself with data, with evidence, and with examples. You never want to be going out on a limb on something you can't back up.

Number seven is citing your sources. I'm sure for many of us, the scourge that was "cite your sources" all through school still looms large in our lives. And it's also probably likely that we never thought that that sort of skill would come in handy. But in the professional world, being the kind of person who always backs up their suggestions, ideas, and opinions with something tangible and verifiable is going to be the kind of person who gets their will enacted much more often. If you're proposing a budget for example or proposing a strategic change in a particular project, you're going to want to come armed with some evidence to support that suggestion. You never want to be caught having to defend something with a simple, "Um, I just think it's a good idea." Being the kind of person who comes prepared with evidence adds a serious level of credibility even before you share said evidence.

Number eight is not letting it show when you're in panic mode. There are going to be times when things feel really overwhelming, or you fear that you may have made a grave mistake, or that you may not be able to deliver on something at work. I mean, in 2020, most of us have probably had at least several times where we were in full-on panic mode. But being the person who keeps their cool who can be relied upon it to be clear headed and solution oriented in their thinking makes you the kind of person that people want to gather around, that people want to trust, that people want to follow. Yes, there are going to be times when you are screaming inside because you're so panicked about getting something out on time. But as long as your outside demeanor is cool, calm, and collected, you're not just doing your team a favor. You're doing yourself a favor by not letting that panic overwhelm you and start to bleed into the work itself. Ultimately, mistakes are going to happen. Deadlines are going to be missed. And things are going to go wrong. But rather than wasting a single moment on panicking about it, especially in front of someone like management or coworkers, you want to be very clear about what is the reality of the situation we're dealing with and if something needs to be fixed or compensated for exactly how do we go about that. Arrive with solutions. Make no excuses. And take ownership of what if anything is going wrong sans the panic.

Number nine is knowing how to present information. Someone who is able to communicate a complicated idea clearly or to illustrate a nuanced idea with an easy-to-understand metaphor is someone with a huge advantage. Practicing at home the various ways of pitching an idea or explaining your rationale or following up a suggestion is a great way to start making sure that when you are explaining something, you are always giving your best case. This is the perfect kind of thing to practice with a friend for example before a big pitch. Being the kind of person who can clearly and thoughtfully coalesce an idea into a simple-to-understand soundbite means being much more likely to sell through your ideas.

Lastly, number 10 is knowing when to let it go. It can be so easy sometimes in the professional sphere to feel like every hill is a hill worth dying on. Sometimes, your co-worker messes something up. And maybe you feel like they didn't get sufficiently called out for it. Or maybe you feel like you ended up taking on some of the heat for it unfairly. And yeah, that sucks and can sometimes feel really unsatisfying. But in the longer term, learning to not sweat the small stuff and to be OK with just focusing on yourself and not being too worried about what other people are doing or how they're being perceived is a very valuable thing. You never want to be seen as the sort of person who holds grudges or who picks every battle or who is a tattletale to management. You want to be so focused on doing a good job yourself that the work speaks for itself. And you don't have to feel in competition with people you work with. Yes, sometimes, as mentioned before, it is fair and right and the professional thing to do to speak up and push back. But oftentimes, the more professional thing is simply to let it go. And if the person is messing up, let that work eventually speak for itself too. Ultimately, you probably have an enormous amount of skills at your disposal that you haven't learned to properly sell yet or even haven't been valuing enough yourself. When you go into your next job search or continue the current one, make sure to be presenting yourself for all the valuable underrated skills you have rather than just sticking to the four most common ones that you tend to see on job listings.

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