Gaining transferrable skills is one of the most important things a new graduate should look for in their first few jobs after graduation. Chances are the first job you take will not be your dream job. It may not even be in the industry you ultimately want to work. Like many things, ‘life is what you make of it’. Never is this quote truer than in the first few years after graduation. If a graduate can turn a job with few responsibilities in an industry they are not familiar with in to a situation where they develop numerous transferrable skills it can set them up for success throughout their career. Many times people find their dream job in these positions they assume they will hate. Making the most of any situation is what a recent graduate can do to set themselves up for success, now and later on in their career. Developing those skills that are relevant in many different industries is crucial to the success of young graduates. Here are 6 skills that are very important for young professionals to develop.
Interpersonal Communication
No matter what industry you ultimately work in, interpersonal communication is going to be a large part of what you do on a daily basis. No matter what role you have within the insurance industry you will have to interact with other people. This may be in the form of working in a small team of coworkers who are in charge of the same accounts. It could be in the form of interacting with an agency interacting with a carrier to find the best package at the best price for your clients. You will have to interact both in person and over the phone with customers looking for different types of insurance.
Professionalism
Professionalism is another skill many recent graduates struggle to conquer in their first few months on the job. In a job interview, everyone puts forth their best foot and most graduates think they are professional in nature, but until they interact with people of different age groups with different levels of education and experience they never are truly ready to conduct themselves in a professional manner. One piece of advice many young professionals take for granted is learning how to conduct yourself in an office or corporate setting. Email is one form of communication that far too many professionals do not take seriously. The younger generation is so comfortable doing most of their communication with a mobile device they frequently forget to notice the difference between an email and a text message. When you are a client interacting with a business, it is obvious when someone sat down and put some thought in to their response. It is equally obvious who responded with a four-word answer while waiting in line at Starbucks. Working in insurance you may be responding to a client about their child’s health insurance or about their small businesses workers compensation insurance policy. Learning how to present yourself professionally will determine whether or not a customer chooses you or your competitor. This is a skill that will be crucial for success in any industry you work in moving forward.
Organizational Skills
In the first job after graduation, many people do not foresee how much they will struggle with organizing and prioritizing their time. Most businesses will have some sort of an onboarding program, but after your initial training many businesses expect you to hit the ground running. Even as you become more experienced in the job employers expect you to take initiative and find ways that you can produce positive results for the business. Decision-making and judgment are important skills to develop alongside your organizational skills. Making sure you know which situations should take immediate attention and which situations are not as important. Organizing these situations will contribute to your success in insurance and developing these skills will set you up for success in many other industries.
Critical-Thinking Skills
Critical-thinking skills are crucial in the insurance industry. Being able to quickly interact with a customer, determine what is most important to them and quickly determine several ways that you can provide them with what they want on their terms they want to receive them. Many customers just want the transaction to be done quickly so they can get back to their daily lives. Other customers do not mind taking half a day of their time to save an additional 5%. You have to determine what is important to the customer and still make sure they have the proper insurance policy they need. Determining what is important to each person quickly will ultimately determine the success or failure of an insurance agent.
Data Analysis
Data is becoming a much bigger part of our daily lives. Nowhere is this more crucial than in insurance. The simplest explanation of the insurance industry is that a business is successful when it collects more in premium than it pays out in claims. This is somewhat true, but like anything in life it is not quite that simple. Analyzing risk is essential to success in the insurance industry and the better a person is at using data to analyze the risk of a persons’ health, their driving habits, the safety of their business or many other parts of daily life will contribute to your success in the insurance industry. These skills dare easily transferred to another industry like banking or finance.
Risk Management
Risk Management is a skill that a person will use in many different industries throughout their career. This could transfer into the banking and finance industry, as a chief risk officer, as a risk management consultant, or even as a manager of a retail store or a restaurant. All of these positions will require a professional to effectively assess the risks a business faces and come up with adequate policies and procedures to deal with those risks. This s something you will do constantly as an insurance professional. Every transaction in this industry deals with the ability to manage the risks of offering coverage to a person or business and effectively managing the amount of risk your agency and the carrier you are partnering with will take on.
Bio
Walt Capell started Workers Compensation Shop in 2005. Workers Compensation Shop is a rapidly growing national insurance agency with a strong reputation for forward-thinking, out-of-the-box products and solutions for business owners. Walt would like to use his experience in insurance and as a small business owner to benefit the leaders of tom
