# The Soft Skills Required in Almost Every Job, and How to Show You Have Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/soft-skills-required/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/soft-skills-required.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 soft skills required by most employers: teamwork, communication, professional behavior, decision-making, initiative and time management. How to show each. ## Key facts - Title: The Soft Skills Required in Almost Every Job, and How to Show You Have Them - Category: What Are Soft Skills - Primary skill: Communication - Related skills: Teamwork, Professional Behaviors - Primary keyword: soft skills required - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/soft-skills-required/ ## What this page covers - The soft skills required by most employers: teamwork, communication, professional behavior, decision-making, initiative and time management. How to show each. - Practical guidance for soft skills required - How this topic connects to Communication ## Detailed explanation The soft skills required by most employers form a short, stable list: teamwork, clear written and spoken communication, professional behavior, sound decision-making, initiative, and managing your own time. Job ads rarely call them soft skills, but they sit behind every "team player" and "self-starter," and all of them can be learned. If you are getting ready for your first applications, that list probably looks both obvious and slightly unnerving. Obvious, because every candidate claims these skills. Unnerving, because it is not clear how an employer would ever check. That second part is where the useful answers are. ## The soft skills required in almost every job Employers are remarkably consistent about what they want. In NACE's Job Outlook 2025 survey, nearly 90% of employers said they look for evidence that a candidate can solve problems, and nearly 80% look for strong teamwork skills. Written communication, initiative and a strong work ethic each mattered to at least 70% of employers, and verbal communication to more than two-thirds. Year after year, NACE's employer surveys return to the same four essentials for new hires: problem solving, teamwork, professionalism and communication. That stability is good news. The requirements are not a moving target that shifts with each hiring trend, and because these skills [transfer across roles](/knowledge/what-are-soft-skills/transferable-soft-skills/), organizations and industries, whatever you build for your first job carries into every job after it. The six entries below describe what each requirement looks like at work, how it tends to appear in a job ad, and how you can show an employer you have it. ### 1. Teamwork Nearly four in five employers in the Job Outlook 2025 survey want it, and in job ads it usually appears as "team player" or "works well with others." Neither phrase says much on its own. At work, teamwork comes down to a handful of concrete behaviors: doing what you committed to, when you said you would; sharing what you know without being asked; giving the group credit for shared results; and disagreeing openly in the discussion, then [backing the decision](/knowledge/teamwork/disagree-and-commit/) once it is made. To show it, skip the adjective and bring a moment instead. A group project where your part held up someone else's, or a time you kept a commitment after it became inconvenient, says more than any claim to be a team player. ### 2. Communication, written and spoken Employers often list these separately, and the NACE data treats them that way too: written communication mattered to at least 70% of employers, verbal communication to more than two-thirds. In job ads, look for "excellent communication skills," "clear writer" or "comfortable presenting to stakeholders." At work, communication is judged less on eloquence than on clarity. Put the main point first, keep it brief, and choose the right medium: a conversation for anything sensitive or complicated, writing when the other person needs time or a record. Speak up in meetings when you have something useful to add, and listen fully before you reply. Your application is the first written sample an employer sees, and the interview is the first spoken one. A short, well-structured cover letter that gets to the point in its first sentence already demonstrates the requirement it describes. ### 3. Professional behavior Employers call it professionalism or work ethic, and it holds one of the widest gaps between what they want and what they find. In NACE's Job Outlook 2023, 91.2% of employers rated professionalism very or extremely important, yet only 48.6% rated recent graduates very or extremely proficient in it. The reason is that professional behavior is learned mostly by being in a workplace, not in a classroom: being on time, treating everyone with the same respect regardless of rank, showing interest and appreciation, handling confidential information carefully, and completing administrative tasks without complaint. That gap is also an opening. Because the norms are learnable and few new graduates know them before they start, getting them right early is one of the fastest ways for a newcomer to stand out. Job ads rarely spell this out beyond "professional manner" or "reliable," which is exactly why it pays to learn the [unwritten rules](/knowledge/professional-behaviors/office-etiquette/) in advance. ### 4. Decision-making The most requested item in the Job Outlook 2025 survey was evidence of problem-solving ability, sought by nearly 90% of employers. In a first job, that requirement shows up mostly in the quality of your everyday decisions: knowing what you are actually [authorized to decide](/knowledge/decision-making/decision-making-authority/), getting a second opinion from someone more experienced, using facts where facts exist, and noticing when you are only looking for information that confirms what you already think. It also means recognizing when a decision belongs with your manager rather than with you. In an interview, a strong example is a decision you made with incomplete information. Describe what you knew, who you asked, what you chose, and what you would do differently. ### 5. Initiative and influence At least 70% of employers in the 2025 survey listed initiative, which job ads translate as "self-starter" or "proactive." At entry level it does not mean leading people. It means volunteering to prepare the agenda or write the summary, asking for the assignment you want (the worst answer is no), and taking responsibility for the bigger picture beyond your own task. Over time, that kind of initiative turns into influence: a reputation for delivering that makes colleagues take your ideas seriously. Show it with something you started without being asked: a process you improved in a part-time job, a student event you organized, or a problem you raised along with a suggested fix. ### 6. Time management "Able to manage multiple priorities" and "works well under deadlines" are time management in job-ad language. At work, it starts before the task does: clarifying who is asking, what exactly is wanted, and when it is genuinely due ("ASAP" is not a date). From there, it means separating the important from the merely urgent, breaking large tasks into pieces, and checking in early rather than delivering the wrong thing late. If you have balanced studies with a job, or several deadlines in one week, you already have material for an interview answer. Explain how you decided what came first, not just that you got through it. ## Why employers treat soft skills as requirements Technical skills often get a candidate through the first screening, but organizations run on people coordinating with other people. A strong analysis nobody understands, a deadline missed because a request was never clarified, or a team that stops sharing information can cost an employer more than a technical gap that training can close. That is why employers write these behaviors into job requirements rather than treating them as extras. > In our studies, we read a great deal about leadership, organizations, employees, and HR, and all of that is useful. But it doesn't always feel entirely representative of what actually happens in the real world. > > Textbooks often describe organizations in terms of systems, structures, and fairly clear-cut frameworks. But once I entered working life, I realized that much of organizational life is actually shaped by human relationships and human behavior. > > The systems and structures are there to hold things together, but it is people who make the organization work in practice. In that sense, the human side of working life carries far more weight than I had expected. That was one of the young people we interviewed about starting work, describing what surprised him once his working life began. He does not dismiss what he studied; he found that the part of the job no course had covered weighed more than he had expected. ## How employers tell whether you have them Because no certificate proves teamwork or professional behavior, employers look for evidence in three places. The first is the job ad, where the requirements appear as everyday phrases rather than as a list of soft skills. Read with the six entries above in mind, "self-starter who thrives in a collaborative environment" turns into two specific requirements: initiative and teamwork. The second is the interview. Behavioral questions such as "Tell me about a time you had to meet a tight deadline" or "Describe a disagreement with a teammate" test these skills directly, and they ask for a specific past example rather than a description of yourself. The third is your first weeks on the job, when how you write, show up, ask and follow through either confirms the impression from the interview or corrects it. For many students, the difficulty is not that the skills are missing. NACE's leadership has pointed out that many students do not see how their college experiences relate to these competencies, so they struggle to demonstrate the connection on a résumé or in an interview. A group project, a part-time job or a volunteer role often holds exactly the evidence an employer is looking for; it just has not been named yet. Before your next application, it helps to [find out which skills you can already back up](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) and which still need practice, so the examples you prepare land where they count. ## The skills behind meeting the bar Look back across the six entries and the requirements cluster around three things: how you get your point across, how you work alongside others, and how you conduct yourself when nobody spells out the rules. **Communication** is where a new employee's work becomes visible to everyone else. The early gains come from small habits: leading with what you need, choosing a conversation over a long email when something is sensitive, and asking rather than guessing. None of it depends on polished presentations or a big personality. **Teamwork** is less about team spirit than about trust built in small installments. For someone starting out, that means keeping every commitment, however minor, passing on what you know, and backing a decision the team made even when you argued for a different one. **Professional Behaviors** cover the norms nobody writes down: respect for everyone regardless of title, humility, appreciation, punctuality and discretion. They are not a dress-code checklist or a lesson in office politics, but habits you can pick up deliberately instead of by trial and error. Professional behavior in particular is hard to judge from the inside, because nobody tells you which unwritten rule you missed. That is the kind of blind spot a structured check is good at catching. The free **Job Skills Test** rates these three and the other work skills that make up a set of **twelve**, and it [shows which gap to close first](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), a gap that, like every one of these skills, narrows with practice. ## Reading the list as your own Some of these requirements may already describe how you work. If you are the one in a group project who confirms the deadline with everyone before the work starts, or who rewrites an email so the request sits in the first line, you have been practicing time management and communication without calling them that. The requirements that feel further away are mostly ones you have not yet had the chance to rehearse, and you can build them without becoming someone else. Employers lean on these skills more heavily with each step up, so the earlier you know your own starting point, the more room you have to work on it before the stakes rise. ## Check your soft skills against the list All that is left is to see how your own skills measure up against what employers require. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: it looks at all twelve, including every requirement on the list above, and shows which ones would do the most for 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 soft skills required by most employers: teamwork, communication, professional behavior, decision-making, initiative and time management. How to show each. ### 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/soft-skills-required/ Preferred summary: "The soft skills required by most employers: teamwork, communication, professional behavior, decision-making, initiative and time management. How to show each." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.