What Are Your Top Three Skills? Expert Advice

Thankfully, this piece aims to help you identify and categorize your top 3 skills. For example, you can use them effectively when getting a freelance job on Upwork or Fiverr.

You may have heard from other people that the greatest investment portfolio you could have is yourself. The idea is that the development returns are continuous for as long as you’re alive. Essentially, you get to develop yourself by improving your skillset.

But adding to your number of skills won’t be helpful if there isn’t any system to utilize it. It’s the reason we have professional skills and nonprofessional ones. The distinction shows that specific skills are used in a more professional scenario than others.

In the digital age today, the concept of skills has been redefined, with a paradigm shift on what you could do with your skills.

Thanks to the rise of the internet, there’s a demand for many more skills than in previous generations.

For instance, editing, proofreading, and people management are highly sought after for positions that traditionally only need writing skills.

Furthermore, platforms like Upwork and Fiverr have heralded the rise of the gig economy, where remote work and freelancers are significant features. The gist is that “professional skills” now have a broader meaning to employers, and you stand a better chance with whatever skill you have now than previously.

Which brings us to the crux of the matter: what skills do you have? It’s the first thing you have to consider, even before you decide if they’re marketable or not. So many people are positive that they are skillful in one capacity but can’t quantify them if they tried.

Thankfully, this piece aims to help you identify and categorize your top 3 skills. For example, you can use them effectively when getting a freelance job on Upwork or Fiverr.

Purpose of Skills

The entire reason for having a skill is to convince an employer that you can complete a task for which you’d get paid. Therefore, skills are all-important on freelance marketplaces like Upwork and Fiverr.

However, you must note that many other people would also like the job you’re applying for and would try to win the client over with their skills. But, of course, you must prove that you’re the best fit for the position. You’d need a well-written resume that showcases your skills in the most appealing way to the employer.

How do you achieve that? By carefully arranging your top skills in their categories. Below are the types of skills you can have.

Soft Skills

Soft skills are those qualities that make up your personality and attitude rather than the things you can do.

Another term for soft skills is interpersonal skills, and they are ambiguous, with no standard for quantification. Also, soft skills are complementary and are meant to go with hard skills.

They don’t necessarily increase your chances of getting hired, but they prove to employers that you have what it takes to function appropriately in a teamwork environment. Some of the soft skills you can have or develop are:

High Adaptability

This skill details your ability to adjust to new work conditions and requirements over a short or long period. Adaptability is a highly sought-after soft skill due to the ever-changing online marketplace and customer expectations.

Employers seek people who are flexible to these changes, allowing them to maintain efficiency when necessary. Therefore, it could help if you mentioned high adaptability as one of your three primary soft skills on your resume.

Attention to Details

Clients value employees that have a keen attention to detail. It’s one of the highly demanded soft skills for Upwork and Fiverr freelancers and can genuinely improve your earning potential.

Attention to detail means you can see the more significant objectives of the task and identify the minute details along the way. In addition, it helps the client save time and minimize errors.

Empathy

Can you sense and understand people’s feelings and manage them positively? For example, you might have empathy for people, a valuable soft skill you can include in your resume when applying for a job.

One clear advantage of having empathy is that you get to avoid a hostile work environment as much as possible. It also allows you to radiate kindness and positive energy, which would, in turn, build trust between team members on a project.

Multitasking

There’s a common saying that humans can’t do two things simultaneously. However, multitasking isn’t about doing tasks simultaneously. Instead, it involves switching between tasks as seamlessly as you can help it. Put, you focus on one job at a time but change focus quickly and effectively to others.

Multitasking is an evident on-demand soft skill in remote and traditional workplaces. That’s because it allows you to complete tasks in less time and improves productivity.

Hard Skills

Hard Skills are the professional skills you have in the industry where you work or intend to work. By nature, you’d have to train yourself on these skills, and unlike soft skills, they are quantifiable through certifications. Below are some of the most sought-after hard skills you can have for Upwork and Fiverr jobs:

IT Skills

Professional IT skills are perhaps the most on-demand for remote and freelance platforms. However, the IT market has been increasing over the years, so you can expect clients to prioritize relevant skills in the sector.

Some IT skills you can get for your resume include;

• Programming language expertise
• Cybersecurity
• UI/UX development
• Data security
• Cloud management

Remember that you’d have to show proficiency in these skills before a client can be convinced that you have them.

Marketing and Advertising

Hard skills you can acquire in marketing and advertising include:

• Content Marketing
• Sales funnel management
• Email marketing
• A/B Testing
• Paid Social Media marketing

Administration

Administrative skills you can get for your Upwork proposal and resume include:

• Data entry
• Desktop publishing
• Vendor management
• Inventory management
• Accounting software management

Wrapping Up

You must identify whatever skill you can sell in the digital world we live in today. The advantage is that you get to improve on yourself with experience and earn higher returns as long you’re alive.

It’s such an exciting prospect, but you’d need to take a step by picking three of your best skills. First, ensure that they are related and relevant to whatever job for which you intend to apply.

The lists and categories above aim to help you pick the right skills in your sector and industry. They would come in handy when writing a resume or proposal on Upwork or Fiverr.