KEY SKILLS EMPLOYERS LOOK FOR

Employability skills and personal values are the critical tools and traits you need to succeed in the
workplace, and they are all elements that you can learn, cultivate, develop and maintain once yo have
identified the sought- after skills and values and assesed the degree to which you possess them. Remember to document them and market them( in your resume', cv & interview answers) for job search success. Below are some of the key skills that employers seek

1. COMMUNICATION SKILLS(LISTENING, VERBAL, WRITTEN)

By far the one skill mentioned most often by employers is the ability to listen, write and speak effectively. Successful communication is critical in business.

2.    ANALYTICAL/RESEARCH SKILLS

Deals with your ability to assess a situation, seek multiple perspectives, gather more information if necessary and identify key issues that need to be addressed.

3.   COMPUTER/TECHNICAL LITERACY

Almost all jobs now require some basic understanding of computer hardware and software, especially word processing, spreadsheets and email.

4.    FLEXIBILITY/ADAPTABILITY/MANAGING MULTIPLE PRIORITIES

Deals with your ability to manage multiple assignments and tasks, set priorities and adapt to changing conditions and work assignments.

5.   INTERPERSONAL ABILITIES
The ability to relate to your co-workers, inspire others to participate, and mitigate conflict with co-workers, is essential given the amount of time spent at work each day.

6.   LEADERSHIP/MANAGENT SKILLS

These skills deal with your ability to take charge and manage your c0-workers

7.   PLANNNNG/ORGANIZING
Deals with your ability to design, plan, organize and implement projects and tasks within an alloted time frame. Also involves goal setting.

8.   PROBLEM-SOLVING/REASONING/CREATIVITY
Involves the ability to find solutions to problems using your creativity, reasoning and past experiences along with the available information and resources.

9.   TEAMWORK
Because so many jobs involve working in one or more work- groups, you must have the ability to work with others in a professional manner while attempting to achieve a common goal.

TYPICAL SALES QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

These are a few questions and answers that will help you during a sales interview:

1. WHAT TECHNIQUE HAVE YOU FOUND MOST SUCCESSFUL IN HANDLING OBJECTIONS?

When answering this sales question acknowledge that objections happen frequently during the sales
 process but that you view them as a positive ratheer than a bad thing. An objection i s a request for more information from the customer and gathering and giving information is one of the key steps to making the sale.
Highlight how you view an objection as an opportunity to engage in conversation about something the customer is interested in. Then focus on an effective strategy that you use to work through the objection. These include the following key steps to handling an objection:

•  Listen and acknowledge the concern.
• Ask questions to clarify and ensure that you have gotten the real objection.
•  Empathise with the objection.
•  Put forward a proposal to overcome the concern.
•  Confirm thgat you have answered the concern.

2. IN THE CURRENT SALES ENVIRONMENT, WHAT IS TH EPROCESS YOU GO THROUGH TO QUALIFY A CUSTOMER?

This question is designed to evaluate your ability to assess what is a solid prospect and not waste your efforts in poor prospects. In tough economic conditions sales people can waste precious resources chasing every lead that comes their way. Focus on the characteristics of a good prospect including the actual needs of the customer, the customer's budget and the real authority of the customer to make the buying decision.
3. WHAT DO CONSIDER THE KEY SKILLS IN CLOSING?

Key points to keep in mind when answering this sales interview question are:

• Recognizing buying signals both verbal and non verbal
• Not attempting to close too early
• Familiarity with different closing techniques such as the alternate choice method etc.
• Allowing the buyer tghe appropriate time and silence to respond to the close.
• To stop selling once the sale is made

4. HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN TO WALK AWAY FROM A SALE?

Sooner or later it will happen that it is necessary to walk away from a customer. This sales question is asked to determine that you do not walk away from opportunities too quickly or for the wrong reasons. You should have a walk-away strategy that is based on valid and consistent reasons. These could include:

• When legal and ethical standards may be compromised such as taking or paying a bribeor compromising your moral or religious beliefs.
• When time and resources do not allow  you to provide the acceptable standard of quality or when you know you cannot deliver what is being asked. This can be viewed as an invitation to failure when the time, energy and resources required to keep the sale or customer are no longer a good investment and the business becomes unprofitable.
• When the deal does not benefit both parties and is not a win-win situation particularly when it is one sided to your detriment.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE BOOKS.
With these question you can give example sof books that are related to sales e.g How to win friends and influence people  - by Dale Carnegie.
 

PRACTICAL THINGS YOU CAN DO TO MAKE YOUR INTERVIEWS RUN SMOOTHLY

1. Practise by going on interviews, even for jobs you have no intention of taking
2. Research the company thoroughly, use the internet, library and periodicals to find
  current information.
3. Know the company's market, products and goals.
4. Memorize some facts about the company and be prepared to cite them during the interview.
5. Formulate a list of intelligent questions to ask during your interview.
6. Talk to people who work or have worked at the company.
7. Hang around the building in the morning, noting how the staff dresses, as well as their body language.

                     TIPS & WARNING

•  Make sure you the Company's location. Go on practice run so that you know how much time you will need to get there.
• Remember your interviewer's name and title

        Reference
     www.ehow.com

SUCCESS - DEFINE IT

What is your favorite activity? What would you do for free? In what activity do you lose
track of time? What can you do without being prompted? Success may be defined variously. One
such definition is that: Success is the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts
or endeavours. One other definition is that sucess is the attainment of wealth, position,
honors, or the like.
None of these may describe what success is to you. It is just as well because you determine
what your success is. If you had an audience with God today, and He told you that your
life is coming to an end and as such you are required to in Heaven, what would you spend
your time doing this week? Or wishing you had done? Spend as much time as possible thinking
about this;what would you spend your time doing in your last days on earth? Or wishing you had done!
These two questions lead you to review your thoughts thoroughly.
Write down your thoughts. This is very important since other people's goals will not motivate you
you as much as your own. Just as takiong a donkey to the well will not guarantee it will
drink, so will other people's dreams  and aspirations not touch you enough to motivate you.
Do not base your choices as what others do and seem happy to be doing. The reality is that
there are unlimited new ideas, billions of people to buy any produc or service you would
be offering.
If at first your dream or idea seems absurd don't worry it may be that it is something
that it is something that has not been done before. The more reasons to go for it. Just
look at the story of the Wright brothers who invented aeroplanes. Their dream to fly seemed
absurd but they eventually did it.
Reference:
Blossom - Recipe for Success by Christine Mweteeli

KEY THINGS THAT A SMALL BUSINESS NEEDS TO CONSIDER BEFORE JOINING THE SOCIAL MEDIA BANDWAGON.

Most small businesses nowadays are either in the social media sites trying to promote their products online with the hopes that the million users of these platforms e.g. twitter, facebook, myspace, LinkedIn will be able to have a look at their products and services and eventually buy. The social media wave is a very good thing but like any other marketing platform one has to evaluate and find out whether the social media platform is good for their business or not.
Below are a few key things that one might consider as regards to social media platforms:
•    Have a Plan – Ask yourself several questions as regards your business. Does it make sense for your business? Do your customers mostly use the social media platforms? One thing to note is that social media is not for every business. Some businesses may do well with social media platforms while others may not.
•    Have a clear goal? Objective in mind – What are your business goals and objectives? Do you want to sell your products or do you want to build customer loyalty? Building loyal customer base with social media platforms like Facebook and twitter takes quite some time and one should not expect overnight success. So for a small business that needs to expand rapidly, then the social media may not be the ideal thing for you. On the other hand for a business that wants to build customer loyalty then the social media platforms may be the ideal thing for you.
•    Create some time for it – Once you set up a social media presence you should be willing to spare some time to regularly check in. The more time you invest in using social media, the more you will get out of it.
•    Monitor Progress and reports – You should ensure that you monitor the progress of the social media platforms. For example some common factors to look out for are: how many visitors go to your site from a social media site, conversion(i.e. how many people clicked through to your site and then a product or service)
•    Be flexible – Since there is no magic formula for success, be willing to change from one marketing platform to another. I.e. if you have been using Facebook and twitter for quite some time and there seems to be no significant growth than don’t stick to it, you can use other marketing platforms.

M – KESHO – Mobile commerce at play

Equity bank and Safaricom recently joined hands to come up with M-kesho a service that is surely going to change the face of E-commerce and M-commerce in Africa.
The service will allow users to perform basic banking transactions like deposits, withdrawals, loan applications (from as low as Kshs 100/-), processing and reception right from their handsets and also earn interest on your mobile account, The application is built with the ability to score a customer’s credit rating using 6 months history of his M-pesa centric balances. Customers will be able to request for insurance policies and get covered without having to walk into Insurance Company or see an insurance agent. The customer will be covered by the terms and conditions of operating the account once they request for the policy. The premiums payment will be tiered so as not to lock out those who truly need them. The mobile system will also allow the customer to check their last 5 transactions on their linked account. The innovation is set to deepen the uptake of mobile banking that has been adopted to varying levels of functionality by several commercial banks, including Kenya commercial bank, Family, and standard Chartered bank. The newly introduced M-Kesho is set to be a rudimentary credit card facility, allowing users to spend money they don’t have and pay later, although the loan approval is likely to take longer than typical credit cards. Safaricom says it has over 250 business partners who accept payments for their services through M-Pesa, up from 75 in the last quarter of 2009. They include utility firms, insurance companies, educational, hospital and government institutions. Safaricom and Equity bank intend to carry out media promotions on these services to educate customers on how to register for the M-pesa equity bank account. One important thing to note is the use of the existing M-pesa agent. M-pesa agents are urged to apply to offer these services in their outlets to further supplement their commissions. The M-kesho service is a big boon to Kenyans especially to the people in the rural areas who find it hard to access loan facilities.

Mocality –Africa’s Mobile business directory

Do you want to advertise your business to your customers and potential customers through a widely available tool: the mobile phone? Do you want to acquire a free mobile website and free bulk SMSes in the process? Then Mocality is your solution.
Mocality offers a free business suite of tools to all listed businesses, such as the ability to upload customer mobile numbers into the mocality platform, a free mobile website and 400 free SMSes each month to message their customers about new products and promotions. Mocality’s CEO Stefan Magdalinski sees Mocality as becoming the largest, most successful, business directory in sub-Saharan Africa by expanding the market via internet technology to include millions of businesses that previously never appeared in a directory, offline or online”. The business is based in South Africa and is part of the Naspers stable, but they took a strategic decision to begin operations in May 2009 in Nairobi due to the good business environment in Kenya, good internet penetration and a lot of mobile phones. Kenya also has M-Pesa, the mobile money platform which makes paying the Mocality agents easy. Mocality crowd-sources business listings through “agents”. Agents can sign-up online and are remunerated to add businesses to the directory, as well as to validate other entries into the system using camera-phones to do so. Mocality’s intelligent search allows users to search and discover businesses by keyword and/or location and provides detailed information on every business. Anybody with a mobile phone in Kenya is eligible for the program and can sign up at http://www.mocality.co.ke/ . Mocality’s main aim is to generate a massive base of local content that is accessible from your mobile phone and easy to search. It’s designed to help you find whatever you need without having to look it up in a book or even use a computer. It’s a wealth of local information in your pocket, wherever you are, any time of the day.
There are a many ways of uploading and accessing business listings. One can do so via the mobile web, email, a j2ME app, an iPhone app, SMS and via a web browser. Mocality is surely changing the game for local business information and services in Kenya and Africa at large.

Whive – Africa’s social network

Social networks and social media have become a buzz in the recent past and one social network engineered by young Kenyans cannot be left out of this revolution. Whive.com is a social networking platform with very interesting applications and features.
Whive.com allows you to post a blog, Audio, video, classifieds, pod/survey and profile which you can send to friends in all other networks. It also allows you to publish your press release or content and reach thousands of people instantly. Learn of new events, parties & announce yours. Develop applications and distribute them widely. Whive.com is emerging to be a strength to reckon with and it has in the past won the “best software category” an event that was sponsored by among others – Butterfly works and ushahidi.
So, whether you want to catch up with your friends, search for new friends or you are just bored and you want to engage yourself in some interesting application just log in to whive.com and get socially immersed!

YU CASH – YU Mobile money transfer system

Yu mobile network provider patnered with obopay (one of the leading players in mobile banking, mobile payments and technology provisioning internationally)  to establish YU cash a mobile phone transfer service in Kenya similar to safaricom’s Mpesa and Zain’s zap. YU cash enables a registered user to:
Deposit money – The registered user is able to visit a YU cash appointed agent and deposit cash into their stored value accounts
Send money – The registered user is able to send the funds held in their stored value accounts to other users instantly .
Withdrawing cash – yucash users with funds in their electronic accounts are able to visit the registered agents and withdraw cash from their accounts with ease and convenience.
Prepaid top-up – registered users are able to buy yu airtime and top up their own or any other prepaid yu line at any time from wherever they are from funds in their yucash.
Balance inquiry – Users are able to check the balance in their accounts at any time wherever they are
Transaction history – Each registered user is able to get a complete record of their recent transactions. This enables users to keep a clear track of transactions on their account and eliminate the need to keep a manual record yucash transactions
Short message with transactions – A registered yucash user gets an opportunity to add a short message with transactions.
Help – Yucash users are able to get help directly out of their mobile phone menu and receive answers to queries about this service without having to call the customer help line.
Invitations – The yucash platform provides users with the ability to build their own networks of regular users by sending invitations to their friends and other contacts into the service directly from their menu.
So how do you register with yucash to start enjoying these benefits? All you have to do is visit a registered yucash agent with your original ID or passport plus acopy, complete a registration form, sign it and the agent will facilitate your registration. You will then be given instructions on how to activate and set your PIN. Once activated your account is ready for use and can start transacting immediately.
Yu cash has also recently patnered with a company called Heart of the city who are promoting online remittances to Kenya from the UK and the US. This means our brothers and sisters in the diaspora are not left out in this mobile money transfer revolution. DO you want to start enjoying all these wonderful services? Simply register as mentioned above and join the mobile money transfer revolution!

FABGURU – “Kenya’s online fashion and beauty retailer

Are you a lady who wants to be classy and fabulous?Then fabguru is one online fashion and beauty store that may have what you need. Fabguru is aimed at fashion forward women of class in Kenya and around the world. Fabguru offers quality products at bargain prices with the main focus being women’s shoes. Fabguru’s clientele is mainly found within Nairobi but also serve those outside the region as they can deliver outside Nairobi to your doorstep within 48 hours of confirming the order. Fabguru is a certified pesapal merchant agent meaning that shoppers can safely shop with them. Fabguru also has their communication channels open 24 hours meaning you can talk to them anytime. The site is also easy to search as it provides its products base with ability to search by type, size or brand therefore offering an interface easy to navigate to find what you are looking for. Visit fabguru at www.fabguru.com and get shopping from the comfort of your home.