# The Best Soft Skills to Have: Six Worth Building First Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/best-soft-skills-to-have/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/best-soft-skills-to-have.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving communication at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer The best soft skills to have early in your career, in order: what employers look for, what each skill looks like at work, and how to show it. ## Key facts - Title: The Best Soft Skills to Have: Six Worth Building First - Category: What Are Soft Skills - Primary skill: Communication - Related skills: Teamwork, Professional Behaviors - Primary keyword: best soft skills to have - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/best-soft-skills-to-have/ ## What this page covers - The best soft skills to have early in your career, in order: what employers look for, what each skill looks like at work, and how to show it. - Practical guidance for best soft skills to have - How this topic connects to Communication ## Detailed explanation The best soft skills to have early in your career are communication, teamwork and professional behaviors, followed by time management, working with your manager and self-awareness. The first three are what employers look for in new graduates and what colleagues notice from your first week. The other three keep you reliable, aligned and improving. All six are learnable behaviors, not personality traits. When every skill is described as essential, it is hard to know where to start, especially when the people you will compete with hold degrees much like yours. Six skills you can practice this month will do more for you than twenty you can only name, and the reason these six earn their place starts with what employers actually ask for. ## What employers look for in new graduates Ask employers what they want from new graduates and the same few skills come back. According to NACE's Job Outlook 2024 survey, nearly 80% of employers look for evidence of teamwork on a graduate's resume, and at least two-thirds look for written and verbal communication skills and a strong work ethic. Problem-solving topped that year's list, at nearly 90%. The order does move. In NACE's Job Outlook 2016, leadership was the most-sought attribute at 80.1%, with the ability to work in a team just behind at 78.9%. By 2024, problem-solving had moved to first. What held steady is that teamwork sat at or near the top both times, with communication close by. So there is no permanent ranking of the best soft skills, but there is a stable core, and it is stable for a practical reason: graduates applying for the same entry-level role often have similar qualifications, so employers look for the behaviors that predict how someone will actually function once they start. Because these are learnable behaviors rather than traits you either have or lack, the real question is not which soft skills you were born with but which behaviors to practice first. The six below are ordered by how early they show up in a new job. ## The 6 best soft skills to have in your first years at work ### 1. Communication Communication is a set of habits rather than one talent: stating your main point first, being clear and brief, listening fully before you answer, writing emails that lead with what you need, and choosing a conversation over a written message when the topic is sensitive or complicated. It ranks first here because it touches almost every task you do, so gaps show quickly and everyone you work with notices them. It is also the skill that makes the others visible. Good teamwork or sound judgment goes unseen if you cannot explain it. One habit students often skip is talking about their work out loud. Writing a strong paper and explaining your approach in a meeting draw on different muscles. If most of your thinking has happened on paper so far, you are in good company. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work told us: > As a student you're used to doing everything in writing. There were whole words I knew but had never said out loud — I would pronounce things wrong. Practicing talking about your discipline out loud, what you bring, how you'd approach things — I wish I had started that with fellow students. The fix she describes is practice, which is the point: this is something you can start well before your first day. ### 2. Teamwork In education, most work is graded individually. At work, outcomes are shared, and teamwork is where that shift shows. It rests on trust, and trust is built by being reliable (doing what you commit to), by being sincere, by sharing knowledge and credit freely, and by disagreeing about the work without making it personal. It also means [committing to a decision](/knowledge/teamwork/disagree-and-commit/) the team has made, even when you argued against it. For a newcomer, reliability is the fastest lever. You can demonstrate it in your first weeks, long before anyone has seen your expertise. That is part of why teamwork stays at or near the top of what employers look for: it is hard to read off a transcript, and easy to see in a colleague. ### 3. Professional behaviors When employers say they want a strong work ethic or dependability, this is what it looks like day to day: being on time, treating everyone with the same respect regardless of their role, handling confidential information carefully, and steering clear of the behaviors that quietly erode trust, such as staying passive in meetings, being constantly negative, or being arrogant about what you know. It also covers following the workplace's written policies and its [unwritten norms](/knowledge/professional-behaviors/office-etiquette/). Those norms are rarely taught. Most people learn them by trial and error, which is exactly why knowing them in advance gives you a head start. None of this asks you to change who you are. It asks you to learn the rules of a new setting. ### 4. Time management In a first job, time management is less about productivity apps than about being someone others can count on. Before you start a task, clarify what is being asked, who needs it and by when, because "as soon as possible" is not a deadline. Put important work ahead of work that is merely urgent, estimate realistically and add a buffer, and learn when and how to say no. A late or missed delivery is one of the most visible ways a new employee loses trust, so this skill protects the reputation the first three build. ### 5. Working with your manager Your direct manager shapes your tasks, the feedback you get and how fast you develop more than any other single relationship at work. Few early-career employees think of this as a skill, yet it decides whether your other skills are seen and used. In practice it means agreeing on expectations and on how much you can decide on your own, preparing for your one-on-ones, bringing a proposed solution along with each problem, and asking for feedback rather than waiting for the annual review. ### 6. Self-awareness This one sits last because it sets the order of the other five for you. Knowing your natural strengths, your blind spots and how others see you is what turns a general list into a personal priority. The main way to find out is to ask for feedback that is specific and looks forward: not "how am I doing?" but "what should I do differently on the next report?" The answer tells you which skill on this list deserves your next month of practice. ## How to show the soft skills you have Writing "strong communicator" or "team player" [on a resume](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/how-to-list-soft-skills-on-resume/) carries little weight, because nearly every graduate application says the same. What persuades is evidence: one concrete moment where you used the behavior, and a clear link to the job you want. The group project you got moving again after it stalled, the deadline you renegotiated before it slipped, the feedback you asked for and then acted on. For each of the six skills above, look for one example from [your studies](/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/soft-skills-in-education/), a student job or volunteering. The skills where you cannot find an example yet are your priorities, and that is useful information rather than bad news, since every one of them can be practiced. If you would rather not guess, [a quick check of your gaps](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) gives you that shortlist without the guesswork. ## The skills everything else rests on Look at the six again and a pattern shows. Three of them shape how other people experience you from the first week, before your expertise has had a chance to count, and the rest mostly decide how well you keep that impression up. **Communication** is where a modest effort pays back fastest. It is not a gift for speeches or a big personality. It is a handful of small habits, like leading with your point and listening to the end, that you can practice in a seminar or a group chat this week and describe in an interview next month. **Teamwork** is where the move from individually graded work to shared results becomes real. It is not about keeping everyone happy. It is about doing what you said you would, giving the team the credit and arguing your case before backing the decision, and any group project lets you arrive with those habits already in place. **Professional Behaviors** turn the employer phrase "work ethic" into things you can actually do: arriving on time, showing the same respect to everyone, keeping complaints in proportion. It is not a dress code or a demand to conform. It is the set of unwritten rules nobody hands you, and knowing them early spares you learning them the hard way. The free **Job Skills Test** shows [which strengths you can already put forward](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), for these three and for the **nine other work skills** that sit alongside them, so you go into your next application knowing what to lead with. Every one of them can be learned, so whatever comes back low is simply the next thing to practice. ## Where you already stand Some of this may already describe how you work. If you are the one in your study group who sends the summary after a meeting, or who checks the deadline before anyone starts, you are practicing communication and time management already, just without the label. The skills that feel further away are not a fixed shortfall. They are behaviors you have had little chance to rehearse, and you can build them while staying entirely yourself. A first job rarely punishes a missing skill on day one, but each step up leans on these a little harder than the last, which makes now a good moment to find out which ones matter most for you. ## Find your own best soft skills All that is left is to put your own name to the list. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: it rates you across all twelve skills, including the six above, and shows which ones would make the biggest difference to your applications and your first years at work. It takes 7 minutes. ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? The best soft skills to have early in your career, in order: what employers look for, what each skill looks like at work, and how to show it. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Communication. It also relates to Teamwork, Professional Behaviors. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/teamwork.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/professional-behaviors.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/best-soft-skills-to-have/ Preferred summary: "The best soft skills to have early in your career, in order: what employers look for, what each skill looks like at work, and how to show it." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.