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Professional Buzz

Professional Buzz

Professional Buzz is a blog warehousing relevant information, tips and tools for students and professionals looking for career development and advice. Topics range from leadership and management skills to interpersonal communication and innovation in the workplace. The blog is written and curated by Associate Dean of the Graduate College, Anne Converse Willkomm – drawing on her academic and professional experience to provide insight into the latest professional trends, challenges and skills needed to thrive in today’s everchanging workplace.

Categories

Professional Development & Career TipsLeadership & Management SkillsInterpersonal CommunicationInnovation in the Workplace
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Social Skills are Essential Skills

Social skills are soft skills, which are also known as essential skills or human skills. They are important and necessary to make you the most effective co-worker, colleague, and leader possible. They are skills that can be learned and mastered, but it starts with you and your commitment to grow and develop over time.

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4 Ways to Boost Your Adaptability Skills

Charles Darwin’s words still very much ring true, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, it is the one that is most adaptable to change.” Adaptability is one of the top “human skills” otherwise known as soft or essential skills employers are seeking. Historically, little emphasis has been placed on these skills, but employers have realized that hard skills on their own are not enough. Employees need to be able to communicate, negotiate, interact with fellow colleagues, think critically and creatively, and they need to be able to adapt.

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6 Ways to Become a Leader

Leadership roles are generally earned, which sometimes leaves young career professionals wondering how they can build leadership experience to earn such a role. It’s that old adage – if I’m required to have leadership experience for a leadership role, and I can’t get a leadership role without leadership experience, how do I get leadership experience? Well, there are six ways you can demonstrate leadership to earn a leadership role.

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3 Ways to Promote Your "Soft Skills"

Writing, problem-solving, adaptability, work ethic, time management, communication, leadership, are just a few of the many skills commonly referred to as “soft skills” and historically viewed as less important than more technical skills. These are now considered essential skills and last week, Marina D’souza – a Drexel BS in Environmental Engineering student ’20 and President of Drexel’s chapter of the Society of Civil Engineers asked me how to best promote these essential skills on LinkedIn or on one’s resume.

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Personal Reflections on the Mandela Washington Fellowship

Learn about the impact the Fellows had on the Drexel community and what they're up to today!

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The Power of Connection: 3 Ways to Build Relations

I don’t know anyone who has been able to succeed in their career without making and developing strong connections and relationships. Sure, we all know someone who has been promoted, maybe more than once, despite being terrible at relationship building. However, in the end, those folks usually don’t rise to the top, they don’t build a coalition of folks under and around them, they often reside on their personal island. It is the process of building connections and forging relationships that helps us succeed and grow in our careers.

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We can learn more from our failures than our successes

In developing a failure résumé, the intent is not simply to list the failures but to focus on what lessons you learned from those failures.

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6 Tips for Better Active Listening

Being an active listener is an important communication skill to master, especially in the workplace. Discover the benefits & unlock the power of listening. 

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Stepping Out of Your Own Experience

We get stuck in our own worlds, doing little to step out of our experience and that has an impact on us both personally and professionally. By broadening our experience, we open ourselves up to new ideas, new people, new perspectives, which in turn provides a space for creativity and collaboration.

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Too Many Balls in the Air?

A leadership exercise I facilitated with the Mandela Washington Fellows teaches us to think about the number of balls we are continually juggling.

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Welcoming the 2019 Mandela Washington Fellows to Drexel University

Learn about the Mandela Washington Fellowship and how much we can discover together.

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The Drexel Legacy: A Message for Our Graduates

To each of you – this is the beginning of so much more. Capitalize on what you have learned. Use it to leverage your future, but also use it to empower others. A diploma from Drexel University should also be about using your skills and knowledge to benefit others.

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