Seven soft skills most immigrants are likely to have
Employers are constantly talking about soft skills. Have you ever stopped to think about what soft skills you can expect most immigrants to have?
This story is also available as a YouTube channel. You can check it out here.
Being an immigrant is never easy, and being an immigrant myself, I can list seven soft skills most immigrants will develop in their immigration journey.
My name is Raphael De Lio and I talk about software development and my journey as an immigrant in Europe. If you like this kind of content, don’t forget to subscribe and clap to this story.
Without further ado, let’s go through the list.
Attitude
I was 22 years old when I moved from Brazil to Portugal in 2017. In comparison, the average age of young people leaving their parental home is 26.5 years in Europe.
But I wasn’t moving to a different neighborhood or a different city a couple of miles away from everything I knew so far. I was moving to a country 8 thousand kilometers away. Definitely, a hard decision to take.
In the dictionary, attitude is a behavior determined by past experiences and the way we respond to them. However, in the field of psychology, the meaning of this ability is something more complex. Attitude is a learned predisposition and consciously applied in favor of goals.
“You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.” Simon Sinek
An immigrant has already taken the most difficult decision in order to reach his goal. How do you think this soft skill could be applied in favor of your company goals, let me know in the comments.
Persistence
Although I came legally due to possessing European citizenship, I came without a job, a home, and without any security. I didn’t know anyone. All I had was a goal and a dream. And I couldn’t just take a bus and go back to my parents’ house, I had to make it work.
The soft skill of persistence is the ability to cope with life’s little curve balls. It is, amongst other things, confidence to try.
According to Richard St. John who is “researching the lessons of success”, persistence is one of the 8 secrets of success.
Does your company need an employee that will not give up when facing the first obstacle? You can count on an immigrant.
Ability to Learn
What most people don’t understand is that when you move to a different country, you need to relearn even the most simple things, such as how to go to a doctor, how to open a bank account, how to get a driver’s license and most of the times, all of that in a different language.
That’s not easy to relearn the most basic things to operate in society, but we need to and we find out there’s nothing we cannot learn.
Proactivity
You don’t usually have anyone to ask for help and you usually have limited rights in comparison to other people in the same country.
While you’re struggling with all those little things, you also need to go to job interviews and compete for job positions with people who are usually comfortable in the other aspects of their lives.
Given that, you cannot be reactive to every little thing that comes in your way. You learn to anticipate problems and be prepared for them even before they occur.
Proactivity involves acting in advance of a future situation, rather than reacting.
Self Management
And then you understand that your weekends may not be as free as they were before, or that going out for dinner with your friends may need to be postponed because you have other priorities now to ensure you can keep moving in the direction of your goal.
Self-management is our ability to manage our behaviors, thoughts, and emotions in a conscious and productive way. Someone with strong self-management skills knows what to do and how to act in different situations.
Creativity
From the day you arrive, you are in constant learning. You’re learning about new cultures, new ideas, new politics, and new ways of doing anything. Even the way you greet someone becomes something new.
Therewith, you start understanding what parts of everything you thought you knew were actually right and what parts can be vastly improved.
Creativity can be defined as the ability to perceive the world around us in order to find points of view not yet explored, make connections between seemingly unrelated issues, and generate solutions.
Self Knowledge
And most importantly, moving to another country means starting to understand who you really are. You understand what your principles and values really are, your major goals change and you start giving priority to what’s truly important in your life.
Self-knowledge can be defined as a person’s knowledge of their own sensations, thoughts, beliefs, and mental states. In turn, self-knowledge differs from external knowledge — or that we acquire through technical and academic means, also referred to as other people’s thoughts and beliefs.
A person who knows exactly who they are and what they want may be more inclined to stay at a company for longer since they probably didn’t take the decision of accepting a job offer on impulse.
What do you think about these soft skills? Are you an immigrant and you can relate? Are you an employer who has hired immigrants with those soft skills before? Let me know in the comments.
See you around!
Contribute
Writing takes time and effort. I love writing and sharing knowledge, but I also have bills to pay. If you like my work, please, consider donating through Buy Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/RaphaelDeLio
Or by sending me BitCoin: 1HjG7pmghg3Z8RATH4aiUWr156BGafJ6Zw
Follow Me on Social Media
Stay connected and dive deeper into the world of tech with me! Follow my journey across all major social platforms for exclusive content, tips, and discussions.
