“RERU” has a responsibility to distribute educational opportunities, strengthen, and improve the local community’s quality of life. There is a unique philosophy namely “Source of Knowledge for a Lifetime” one whose mission is to produce graduates with academic wisdom standards including ethical, moral excellence, volunteering, conserving natural resources and the environment, being aware of being Thai, and having love and commitment to the local area, in addition, to promote life-long learning. In this article, the writer prefers to present outstanding soft skills for future careers to the students from the university in Thailand as well as provide a valuable guideline by providing activities and opportunities for students to gain as follows.

What are soft skills?

Soft skills are personal attributes that characterize a person's relationships with other people. it is needed for success in a job or career. Sociologists may use the term soft skills to describe a person's emotional intelligence quotient (EQ) instead of intelligence quotient (IQ).

Why are soft skills important?

Soft skills are general skills that most employers look for when recruiting and are needed for most jobs. They are sometimes called transferable skills or employability skills by employers. Due to these reasons, this university enables soft skills in Students to predict success in their future careers even in high-tech environments. In addition, adaptability ensures students’ survival in modern organization and allow their hard skill to shine.

 Top 5 soft skills

Employers will be looking for people with soft skills that fit the culture of their company and here they focus on the top 5 soft skills employers are looking for, there are Communication skills, Leadership skills, Positivity skills, Flexibility skills, and Problem-solving skills.

 Communication skills

Communication is an important skill for a wide range of jobs and sectors, like digital and IT – clear email communication, marketing – writing good communications for your audience, retail – dealing with customers and care and social work - helping and caring for people.

How to communication skills in students

To develop RERU students for communication skills which encourage them to meet new people and work with them. The university provided sports day activities, which are organized every semester to enhance students with social interaction. Moreover, the challenging activities held by the language center is language competition like public speaking and work presentations.

Leadership skills

Employers associate good leadership skills with management skills. But it also shows employees can look after their workload. Even if you are not a manager, students are likely to have had leadership experience, like time management, conflict management, and problem-solving mentoring.

How they promote leadership skills in students

To develop student’s leadership skills, the student development staff section has arranged the volunteer camp so all students have an opportunity to participate in activities and run all processes e.g., organize their schedule by creating a timetable, resolve the conflict between friends, motivate others as well as teach skills to others.

Positivity skills

A good attitude is something a lot of employers look for. Employers look for people who see solutions, not problems. This soft skill is easier to show an employer in an interview stage. students could show that they have a good attitude and are happy to meet people. Employers want someone that will be happy to be at work and get along with the other members of the team.

How they promote positivity skills in students

To promote students with positivity skills, the student’s advisor always asks for meeting every month and lets them share their university life stories. Example question “How to overcome the crisis of covid-19 pandemic with affected your learning?”  Then discuss, and reflect later on to try to get the best out of a hard situation together.

Flexibility skills

Flexibility tells employers that you are adaptable to different situations. It shows you can handle change and adapt at short notice. It also tells employers that you will help in situations that are not part of your job role. You are willing to go over and above what you need to do sometimes.

 How they promote flexibility skills in students

Before starting the new semester, students are required to join the guidance project. The project is organized and incorporated by university psychologists and student advisors. The activities’ topics provided for them like, “How to set their priority when doing more than one task at a time”, “How to rearrange your day because of an emergency” etc.

Problem-solving skills

Employers look for problem-solving skills because it shows you can find problems and fix them.

How to promote problem-solving skills in students

Thai Qualifications Framework for Higher Education (TQF) is a framework that sets standards for graduates' learning outcomes at each level of study in a field/field of study, which defines graduates' qualifications in that field/field, degree, and body of knowledge. One of the student’s skills required after they did their degree is “Problem-solving skills”. For this reason, the university lecturer has to design lesson plans in the different fields of study embedded with tasks that elicit students’ problem-solving skills as well as set the criteria and rubric for evaluation.

Soft skills are known as “people skills” or “interpersonal skills” the; ey are more likely to be the kind of a person who picks up on life experience and shows that the new employee will be a great fit in the workplace.

Move on with smart worker…

I'm Dr. Angcharin Thongpan working as an Asst. Prof. in  Roi Et Rajabhat University, Thailand, Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction (English Language Teaching), Master of Education in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), Bachelor of Education (English program),