Pathways to Success: The Importance of Strong Communication Skills

One of the most important traits that will lead you to success is a great ability to communicate. When you are first starting out in your career, you will spend a great deal of time networking. You can network through internships, part-time jobs, speaking with professors, attending informational interviews, and surveying job fairs. In order to properly network and make important connections, then you must have a strong set of communication skills.

You can have a great education and be fully trained, but with a poor set of communication skills it will be hard to get your foot in the door. For example, if you attend an interview and mumble through responses to questions, never look your interviewer directly in the eye, and forget to say "thank you" at the end of the meeting, your resume will probably go in the recycle bin, no matter how high your GPA was.

Furthermore, without a good set of communication skills it will be difficult to reach out to professionals in your prospective industry in order to learn more about the working world. It might be even more difficult to find a mentor.

If you feel that your communication skills are lacking, or if perhaps you simply need to polish them a bit, there are a number of ways to strengthen them. First of all, observe people who you respect as strong communicators and note how they speak to other people, how they carry themselves, what kind of body language and gestures they use. Try to emulate their manners.

For specific training in communication skills, consider taking a course in public speaking. Many colleges and universities offer such courses. If your college or university offers a major or minor in communications, then there are probably a number of courses in public speaking as well as networking. A public speaking course will teach you to speak directly, clearly, and with ease. It will help you prepare yourself for meetings and events.

In addition to public speaking, consider taking a course in debate. In order to effectively debate, you have to clearly and convincingly state your point. This takes confidence and poise, important aspects of powerful communication. In a debate, you will have to defend your position in many different ways and from numerous different angles. An interview, in some ways, is similar to a debate. You will have to state your point (that you are the best candidate for the job) with confidence. Furthermore you must support this point with facts - your experience, skills, and professionalism. Of course, you should never correct an interviewer or speak aggressively to him or her as you might during a debate. The communication skills that you will learn during a debate, however, can be very important in terms of interviewing as well as the rest of your professional life.

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