The real world of work requires more than a degree. Employers worldwide are looking for potential hires that can back up their technical training and education with applicable execution and masterful ideation. To establish yourself as a competent and desirable asset, you need transferable problem-solving and analytical skills that can accompany you through whatever industry of your choosing, no matter the scale or scope.
Here are 3 useful skills to learn and master before you graduate that can give you a competitive edge as a full-time working adult:
1. Using the VRIO Framework
The VRIO framework is a form of internal analysis that can be used to identify, protect, and leverage the nuanced resources of any business that give them a competitive edge in any industry sector they’re operating within.
Graduating students should learn and master the skill of using the VRIO framework to conduct high-level analyses regardless of whether they are looking to start their own business or work for an organisation.
For the former, VRIO analysis allows for a good backdrop to model start-up operations and go-to-market strategies around. For the latter, it can be used to determine intrinsic benefits not just within the business as an organisation, but within departments as well. This way, individuals can suggest refinement for existing processes and better meet deliverables can be in a way that maximises meaningful value.
In both cases, the VRIO framework is a useful skill to learn that can also help individuals learn more about their strengths and what makes them unique assets, such that they can perform better during hiring interviews and work on targeted self-improvement to increase their employability if required or desired.
2. Leveraging Perceptual Maps
Perceptual mapping is another great tool to add into any graduating student’s repertoire of problem-solving frameworks and analytical skills. Perceptual maps are applicable to a wide range of scenarios, and extremely important when it comes to corporate analyses of perceived value.
Graduates looking for hired work who recognise perceptual maps as a useful skill to learn have the competitive advantage of being able to bridge consumer perceptions with reality, thereby empowering the businesses they work for to avoid customer dissatisfaction and to tailor operations, products, and services in a way that best meets what the market demands. In other words, the simple leveraging of perceptual maps can boost an otherwise entry-level candidate to be suitable for managerial positions due to the value they can bring in terms of business management.
Needless to say, leveraging perceptual maps is an even more important skill for graduating students looking to start their own business and be successful. Consumer satisfaction is the cornerstone for any and all organisations, and all analyses done without the consideration of perceived value will undoubtedly return results that are unsustainable or unoptimized.
3. Practising Good Time Management
Of course, no graduating student is ready for employment without the ownership of good time management skills. Practising good time management helps you prioritise all your tasks such that you can ensure that you complete every project on time, be they taken as a self-employed person or given as an employee. It also acts as quality control to prevent the inherent drop in standards that often accompanies rushed work in the face of a fast-approaching deadline.
To achieve good time management, graduating students must also know where their respective strengths lie and what their employers or work demands of them in terms of nuanced expertise and deliverables. More often than not, much precious time is spent on tasks that may not be good usage of an individual’s specific strengths, such as proofreading, editing, writing, and other administrative tasks.
Consider outsourcing these functions either individually or collectively as a department to free up yourself and those in your team to engage in business activities that more urgently require your or their specific expertise. You can easily find ghost writers for hire in Singapore, along with proofreaders and English editing services if needed
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