As a rule, even experienced employees face difficulties while trying to find a well-paid job. And even if they are lucky to find one, there are still a lot of applicants. The competition provokes the question of how to surpass other candidates and what skills can help you to prove you’re the best.

Surely, no one can give you a 100% correct answer, as various specializations and situations require diverse experience and educational level. However, there are some varied skills that will help you stand out from other applicants for a profitable position. Let’s find out what they are.

The skill of resumé composing 

A proper resumé helps you tell the hirer about your education and other skills in a brief and clear way. At the same time, it should attract the employer’s attention and present you like the most profitable investment. That’s why people who can write a bright, captivating, and informative resumé have higher chances to surpass the rivals and get a job with a competitive salary.

So, what are the main characteristics of a proper resumé?

If you apply for a highly paid job, your resumé should present a large amount of information, each part of which should be unambiguously clear to any HR specialist. Each section should answer, “Yes,” when asked whether to invite you for an interview. 

Here is the list of questions, the answers to which will help the hirer decide on an applicant. And, if you provide the right answers, you are halfway closer to your dream job and salary:

• Who am I?
• What problems can I solve?
• What are my unique features as a specialist?
• Who can provide feedback about me?
• What courses, training, education did I take?
• What will the company get if you hire me?
• What tasks did I complete before, and what results did I get?

Also, there are a lot of rules that increase the quality of your professional description and, consequently, increase your chances of being invited for the interview. Apart from being brief and informative, specialists recommend applicants to read the vacancy description with maximum attention, be non-standard but not freaky, and never lie in the resumé.

The skill of resumé writing improves with practice. Try to form several descriptions for different positions. Also, we recommend reading articles on this topic and looking for decent examples of successful resumés. If you what to get more information on how to make a resumé, you can find it on a job site like farfarjob.com.

People management skills

As a rule, a high-paying job is connected with great responsibility, such as staff management. The heads of departments, projects and teams earn more compared to an ordinary employee. That’s why, if you’re looking for a profitable position, it will most probably be a post where you’ll have to manage other people. 

While some skills like cloud computing or taxation are useful only in certain specializations, people management is in high demand in all professional spheres, including IT, law, engineering, education, sales, medicine, etc.

In general, such a specialist controls the quality of work, timing and budget. The tasks are diverse, as in different cases, you should be an analyst, a strategist, or even a psychologist. That’s why the skill of people management includes a significant number of other sub-skills. 

You should know how to inspire your team, have bright charisma and communicative competence. Also, it’s quite essential to know how to delegate responsibilities and negotiate with the employees, superiors, partners, and competitors.

The hirer is ready to invest in you to get more profit from your work and the work of your subordinates. So, if the company sees that you can increase the productivity of the staff, you will get the job.

Creative skills

No matter how trivial it seems, creativity is one of the main qualities which can help you attract attention and get the job.

Firstly, an unusual way of thinking is an important quality for an employee who counts on a decent salary. If earlier businessmen preferred submissive implementers, nowadays they are ready to listen to fresh ideas, they are looking for a creative team, which can build a strategy and compete in the international market. Employers realize that to achieve success, you need people who aren’t afraid to take the initiative and can provide an exceptional point of view.

And, secondly, modern tendencies in the digital and IT industries dictate quite strict rules to the labor market. Many experts and IT billionaires like Bill Gates are sure that artificial intelligence is our near future. Therefore, within several years, robots are supposed to perform many jobs. So, the hirers bet on humanitarian skills and mainly creativity.

According to the forecasts, in the future, the ability to be creative in solving problems and find a quick and non-standard way out of a situation will become invaluable. That’s why such a skill is increasingly displacing the usual set of requirements like the knowledge of office software.

Many employers are already looking for not just specialists, but people with developed communicative skills and the ability to think outside the box.

However, if having read this, you thought, “Oops, it seems like I will never manage to find a well-paid job as I am the dullest person the world has ever seen,” you are profoundly wrong. Though creativity is an innate gift, each person has it to some degree. If it doesn’t show up properly, there are various exercises which can help improve this skill.

In conclusion, note that one of your primary skills as a successful applicant and employee is confidence. Don’t be afraid to communicate with people. This is the secret of a decent income, good recommendations and promotions.

However, remember that all these characteristics mentioned above should be a supporting addition to your basic skills, education and working experience. Constant self-education and development are equally important. 

Nicole Shuey is based in London and specializes in job searching on FarFarJob.com. She has an in-depth understanding of the subtleties of job searching, resumé writing and interviewing. Nicole previously worked as an HR specialist for a London HR agency.