3 Essential Skills to Prioritize in Your First FTE Role

We act, consciously or subconsciously (most often it’s the latter) — based on what we value.

Below are 3 core skills and the related core values and micro-skills I’ve found to have the most impact on my almost 3-year long career after grad school — that includes double promotion, leadership sponsorship to execute on new ideas, and a seat at the table even as an individual contributor.

1. How can I always be learning?

Doing the work expected from you will teach you some skills on the job relevant to your role.

You can then accelerate your learning by:

• ?? Reading books — relevant to your role, industry, and people.

I work in technology sales. Books on behavioral psychology i.e. understanding why people do what they do have given me the most bang for my buck.

And if you’re new to reading books then:

“Read what you love until reading is what you love.” — Seth Godin

• ??? Interviewing people in your profession.

Most often people want to help. Because it feels good and most of us want to feel good about what we do.

So ask others who have more experience in your profession.

Questions like —

- “If you could go back in time and start your career in this role, what are 3 things you would do differently?”,

- “What are some unconventional things you’ve done that have helped you to get the most ROI of your efforts?”, etc.

• ?? Continuously improving your internal processes.

"What Got You Here Won’t Get You There?”— great book by Marshall Goldsmith. Highly recommended read.

But more importantly, each company has a set of work processes that starts to become obsolete as the company grows beyond a certain stage.

For example - the processes to take a startup from 0 to $1M to $10M in revenue are different from what it’ll need to go from $10M to $100M.

Ask your CEO where does the company’s offering fits with regards to the Law of Diffusion of Innovation. Typically, internal processes start breaking once the company crosses the chasm.

Companies add head-counts to solve it but there’s often room to maximize operational efficiency.

So be that maverick employee who always looks out for areas of process improvements and strives to make the company’s operations more effective and efficient i.e. you get to help out your COO no matter what’s your rank.

And if you do it right, that will often contribute to cost-savings (bottom-line) or top-line growth. You can take that data to negotiate and get a raise.

Curiosity as a core value is key here i.e. you must be willing to seek out, experience, and learn new things

Micro-skills for continuous learning includes always be innovating/ideating, taking risks (executing on your ideas), accepting that you’ll be wrong (often), and asking for help.

2. How can I collaborate with others?

With the post-pandemic, remote-first workplace being a norm, learning how to collaborate with others effectively can be a game-changer for your career.

For example, I’m right now preparing for an exec meeting with one of my Fortune 100 customers. The folks helping make that presentation a success include our CEO, COO, my manager, and from my customer side — 3 Managing Directors, 3 VPs, and a few more application developers.

Business doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. Magic happens when people start collaborating together to achieve a shared goal/mission.

And most often, if you’re offering something that the customer values, they will want you to win or at least help you if you ask for help.

“You can have most of the things in life if you help enough other people to get what they want in life.” — Zig Zigglar

Core values that foster healthy collaboration —

• Cooperation i.e. to work collaboratively with others.
• Compromise i.e. to be willing to give and take in reaching agreements.
• Belonging i.e. to have a sense of belonging and be a part of something bigger than just myself.

Micro-skills for effective collaboration includes understanding what are the motives of the people you’re collaborating with i.e. figure out the business & personal goals they have and help them achieve those.

3. How can I Sell My Ideas to Others?

Which truly means — how to make others think your idea is their own and feel good about acting upon it?

Selling gets a bad rep in business. But it’s not just the salespeople who are in the business of selling.

The CEO needs to sell the company’s vision and mission to her people.

HR needs to sell the company culture to the candidate interviewing there.

The VP of Engineering/Product needs to sell to developers that they’re building something really interesting and cool.

Similarly, you need to sell yourself in order to get a promotion/raise or you’ll be handed the lowest end of the deal i.e. your default 3-5% annual raise.

Dan Pink is right — to sell is human.

Core values that help you to sell better —

• Challenge i.e. to take on difficult tasks and problems.
• Courage i.e. to be brave and strong in the face of adversity.
• Genuineness i.e. to act in a manner that is true to who you are.

Micro-skills on selling effectively include understanding human behavioral psychology, neuroscience of the brain, persuasion & building trust, storytelling both through facts/data, and the kind of stories that trigger human emotions, etc.

How can I empathize and serve others better? — I’m still learning this and hopefully will have more to share in a few years.

If you’ve been in your industry for over a decade, what else would you add to the above list?