11 Professional Skills to Develop in 2024

Discover the main professional skills sought after by the job market in 2024 and start improving your qualifications now.

Are you clear on the professional skills that are really needed to build a good resume? This is usually an insecurity for those who are developing professionally or looking for a career transition, after all, presenting the right group of skills to the leadership or recruiters can be decisive to conquer a vacancy.

The best way to overcome uncertainties is to understand which skills the market is valuing and which are indispensable for the position you are applying for. The next step is to work on developing them.

To help you position yourself well in the market, we have detailed in this text 11 professional skills to put on your resume and develop this year.

11 PROFESSIONAL SKILLS TO DEVELOP IN 2024

Much more than a mere formality, putting professional skills on your CV is essential to show your capabilities in working relationships, as it shows your aptitude to deal with the various challenges of your position.

The competitiveness in the job market increases the demand for the selection of candidates. Currently, characteristics such as emotional control, constant technical updating, and leadership skills are seen as essential skills to perform a role with excellence.

Do you want to be on the radar of companies that need new employees? Check out the best professional skills to master this year.

1. Continuous Learning

In the information age, knowledge is gold. This phrase is reinforced by the World Economic Forum, which places lifelong learning in the top 3 critical skills for professionals of the future.

The famous “ learning to learn ” — which we talk about a lot at Tera — is capable of expanding horizons, stimulating the creation of ideas, decision-making, and developing of soft or hard skills.

By understanding the importance of continuous learning, you develop a growth mindset, mobilize yourself to get out of your comfort zone, and increase your willingness to face challenges, fundamental characteristics for professional improvement.

The constant search for knowledge will improve your skills, adding value to the company and your daily life. Learn more about continuous learning skills.

2. Communication

Companies highly value those who know how to express themselves clearly and objectively. Good communication is essential for the alignment of the company’s purposes, as it is important that everyone speaks the same language, for a better understanding and achievement of goals.

Be careful, knowing how to communicate doesn’t mean talking non-stop. Always keep the balance between listening and expressing yourself. The characteristics of a good communicator are:

• Expressiveness;
• Listening;
• assertiveness;
• Empathy.

If shyness is a barrier, look for ways to develop this skill. Videos, books, or specific courses, such as theater, are great ways to overcome insecurity and add another differential to your trajectory. Learn more about communication skills.

3. Leadership

The leadership of a team is crucial to lead the group to success or failure. Leadership is influencing through authority and getting your team to contribute enthusiastically, creatively, and efficiently.

Knowing how to exercise a leadership role is understanding the needs of the team and working together to achieve the goals.

Always recognize employee efforts with praise, raises, career paths, and empathy. These are great ways to keep the group motivated to achieve results.

Avoid imposing the hierarchical power relationship. There is a great possibility of destroying relationships within the company and ending the work environment.

Replace “do it because I tell you to” with “I believe it will be more effective this way, do you agree?”. Would you like to work with someone who just sets rules?

Be the example of a leader who grows and accumulates achievements with the entire team. Learn more about leadership skills.

4. Teamwork

This is a professional skill that is often present on resumes, but do you really know how to work in a team? Understanding that teamwork is the sum of the skills of each member to achieve a common goal is a great professional virtue.

It is essential for the group that you know how to communicate positively, cooperate with co-workers, seek to understand their difficulties, help them overcome challenges, and listen to the demands of those who build results with you.

These combined elements can lead to individual and collective success, consequently creating overall well-being and promoting the company’s growth. More on Teamwork skills.

5. Self-management

If you have well-developed self-management, you can now take control of actions with autonomy and responsibility. The professional with accurate self-management is independent, focused, and efficient. The main attributes of this skill are:

• Know how to prioritize tasks;
• Commitment to the team (going beyond individual interests)
• manage your responsibilities
• Set and meet goals
• Perform multiple tasks simultaneously

Always keep in mind that self-management doesn’t mean doing everything alone, so don’t accumulate functions that you can’t perform without help, and know how to say no, when necessary, if the number of demands is above your delivery limit.

Completing your tasks in an organized way, and setting goals and objectives, will transform you into a much more focused and results-oriented person. More on self-management skills.

6. Analytical capacity

Knowing how to transform data into actions that generate company growth: this particularity is what defines professionals who have analytical skills. The market has learned the power of data and the value of well-analyzed information.

This attribute, when combined with creativity, makes possible forms of innovation, but for that, it is necessary to have people who have this expertise in your team.

People who have improved analytical skills are qualified to look for metrics that evaluate business strategies, interpret the data obtained and convert these numbers into actions to be taken in projecting the institution’s progress.

To develop this professional skill, focus on:

• Improve critical thinking;
• Connect with varied ideas and subjects;
• Invest in data analysis courses;
• Develop a broad perspective of your field.

You may be asking yourself “how do I know I have analytical skills?”.

There is no ready answer, the ideal is that the sum of your experience with the ease of learning about data will lead you to the improvement of competence and consolidation of knowledge. More on analytical capacity skills.

7. Business Vision 

The business vision skill is the combination of visualizing the project in a broad way, converting the connections of each department, and creating strategies that leverage the business to the maximum relevance to the consumer.

The professional with an understanding of business vision is responsible for defining a clear future and building objectives and goals to be achieved together with the team.

Planning is built from the understanding of the company’s reality and the market where it operates, in addition to constant updating on trends, competition, and consumer behavior.

To improve the organization’s internal and external views and ensure better delivery of results, 5 topics are taken into account:

1. sector indicators;
2. consumer practices;
3. company interests.
4. market opportunities;
5. customer demands.

These items are directly responsible for the result of the planning and consequently for the success of the company. More on business vision skills.

8. Troubleshooting

Companies need good solvers who can solve problems quickly. The surprise factor in a setback can destroy everything a company has built if there is no planning to control adverse situations.

If you want to develop this competence well, it is essential to deepen your knowledge of crisis management and disaster anticipation.

Creating small tasks within the strategy will facilitate the organization to overcome problems in the company. Whenever possible, study each topic, and seek references in the area or people who have already faced that challenge.

Manage the necessary resources and act quickly to resolve impasses. Don’t underestimate the power of tests, put the planning into practice and record the results to analyze the effect of the measures taken. More on troubleshooting skills.

9. Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the foundation of all professional skills. The lack of it is the cause of many professionals not being able to go further in their careers, as the imbalance generates a series of distrust and discomfort in the work environment.

Avoid impulsive attitudes and stay resilient. Appreciate peaceful communication and distance yourself from excessive comparisons with your peers in the company, preventing an exaggerated competition climate.

Characteristics such as extreme anxiety or unbridled anger are responsible for disagreements. If you suffer from anxiety, depression, or the like, seek professional help.

Being able to deal with feelings doesn’t mean being cold, but knowing how to use positive emotions in your favor, to obtain significant results.

It is important to have self-motivation, self-control, empathy, self-confidence, and good communication.

Controlling your feelings will make you stronger to deal with adversity and prepare you to build an emotionally solid career. More on emotional intelligence skills.

10. User Experience

Dedicating yourself to user experience – in English, User Experience – basically consists of making the relationship between consumer and product or service more pleasant, taking into account factors such as communication with the company; web browsing; product delivery, and after-sales.

This competence is not exclusive to the marketing or sales teams, everyone can contribute to the construction of a product that can deliver what the user needs.

To understand your customer’s behavior, it is essential to understand the consumer journey. Analyze the path it takes from the first contact to the after-sales and identify possible obstacles that occur in this path, which can be improved.

Remember that the error is never the user’s, but the system’s, which is still not intuitive enough.

As with other professional skills, empathy is necessary to develop a good experience for customers and generate satisfaction with the brand.

A tip to provide a positive experience for your customers is to create FOCUSED content. Interested? This is an acrostic for:

• Easy to use;
• Optimized to appear in searches;
• Reliable;
• Accessible across platforms and languages;
• Desirables;
• Useful for user needs.

Don’t forget that the better the user experience, the more chances of potential customers and consumer loyalty. More on user experience skills.

11. Agile Mindset

Here we are not talking about doing everything in a hurry. Having an agile mindset means being more efficient in the shortest possible time, using tests, gathering answers, applying improvements, driving MVPs, and creating agile teams.

This mindset is based on the agile methodology, which is the approach to developing services or products using Collective Intelligence.

From self-managed and competent teams in multiple areas, it is possible to generate a mix of ideas and solutions effectively combining: response time, technology, and collaboration.

Unlike the traditional model, called waterfall, where the delivery of the product to the customer is the last step, the method proposes the initial delivery and the increment of the product according to the returns that these customers give, providing continuous improvement.

Working with an agile mindset is working in partnership. They are all together thinking and adding experiences due to the success of a project or product.

Collective practice generates joint efforts and speed in solving problems, accelerating the progress of the work and becoming more efficient every day.

HOW TO PUT YOUR PROFESSIONAL SKILLS ON YOUR RESUME?

Once you’ve developed the necessary skills, it remains to be seen how to position them attractively on your resume. Initially, it is necessary to understand that it is your first contact with the job opportunity, so keep it updated and organized.

Know that he must be clear and objective, showing everything he knows how to do and what he wants to achieve. Check out other tips to strengthen your resume.

Take Soft Skills Development Courses

Investing in your learning will boost your career progress. Throughout the text we explain the importance of having professional skills that differentiate you in the professional journey, so make regular plans to develop new skills and improve knowledge.

Seek constant updates on changes and innovations in the desired area, your interest in specialization attracts the attention of recruiters and demonstrates professional ambition.

Mention Skills in the Context of Roles and Projects

What makes you compatible with a job opportunity is offering the professional skills that the company is looking for.

That said, be sure to include technical and behavioral knowledge on your resume that matches the scope of the job you are looking for.

Analyze the available position and the institution’s missions and values ​​and adapt its content to the required needs. Lying is not an option.

If you are interested in the position but do not yet have the required experience, be proactive in learning. Be careful to put only what you really know and signal if that skill is under development.

Bring Practical Applications During Cases and Interviews

Presenting situations where your skills were required is the icing on the cake to show your competence in the area. Talk to the recruiter or within your project about how you’ve dealt with that setback before.

Talk about creations or assistance in the development of some objective, through your expertise. For example: “I used team management and leadership methods to achieve record sales in the company”. Talking about your previous experiences will increase the chances of your success in the vacancy.

A good resume can open doors to a new professional universe. Now that you know which professional skills are most in demand and how to develop them, it’s time to plan for apprenticeships and dedicate yourself to improving your business card to attract the attention of recruiters.