Apprentice Hoots: Soft Skills 2.0

Apprentice Hoots: Soft Skills 2.0

In a previous blog, we spoke about the importance of soft skills within the technology industry. Charlotte has been working hard to develop her own soft skills and this week her Apprentice Hoot blog showcases her brand new skill set…

Developing a new skill set

When I began my apprenticeship, I was completely new to the industry and although I had a relatively good set of soft skills, it was clear that I had to adapt and learn new skills in order to really develop in this role.

Following on from my previous Apprentice Hoot blog on soft skills, I have been working to actively develop my skill set and a few of my favourites that I’ve been working on include:

Improving my team skills: Coming from a background of independent and competitive working, I always wanted to be able to work as part of a team and I recognised quite early on in my Salesforce journey how much of what Coacto does was based around collaborative working. Within Coacto, we have a daily SCRUM meeting to go through our tasks and provide support if necessary and keep each other in the loop – which I think is a great way to embrace the work of each team member. Other aspects where I have been able to work on my team skills include attending customer meetings, as well as working collaboratively to develop and build a Salesforce demonstration for a potential customer. Jessica and I have also been working together to develop these blog posts too!

Having a sense of calm: Getting stuck with a Trailhead? We’ve all been there… This is something that used to make me feel overwhelmed when I couldn’t move past a certain module. I knew that being stressed wouldn’t help me in any situation, therefore I made an effort to practice mindfulness once I had  recognised the signs. If I still couldn’t make it past the bump, I knew it was time to take a break and come back to it with a fresh mind, or seek some input from a team memberSometimes simply explaining an issue or challenge to a team member gives you the input you need!

Being more time efficient: Being in an industry where time management is essential for delivering against customer projects, I have worked with members of the team to learn how to manage my time between prospects, customer projects and apprenticeship modules. A big part of this is about planning skills…

Planning skills: A piece of advice that Paul gave me was ‘to manage yourself, like you would a project’ – This is something that has helped me to plan my time and my tasks more effectively. Within my first month, I was tasked with developing an 18-month plan of smart objectives of goals I want to achieve. Utilising this I am able to plan out my worklist from week to week and confidently organise my daily lists using the platform Asana.

Advancing my organisational skills: At the beginning of my journey, when tasked with a new project I had no relevant experience in organising time frames and tasks. I’ve been working to develop my organisational skills by ensuring that I break assigned work down into manageable tasks and set deadlines between each mini-project to complete the big picture within the expected time frame.  Don’t try and boil the ocean!

Building my presentation skills: Jessica, our Marketeer has been teaching me how to sprinkle her fairy dust on documents that may, initially, not be very pleasing to look at. With this in mind, I am currently working on developing a presentation to outline a solution to show to a potential customer later this week!

Owl see you later…

Charlotte

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