A 23-year-old engineer who landed an Amazon job right out of college reveals how 7 soft skills helped her succeed in the workplace by Rachel Premack on Aug 29, 2018, 11:40 AM Advertisement
 - Amazon hires fresh college graduates and those with decades of experience alike.
- Corey Salzer started working at Amazon Web Services shortly after graduating from the University of Washington in St. Louis in 2017.
- Below, she reveals some of the most important soft skills she learned in her first year at Amazon.
Corey Salzer is a solutions architect at Amazon Web Services, the internet company's cloud computing arm that provides solutions for companies ranging from Unilever to Spotify to Comcast. She's only been in the position for a year, but she told Business Insider it's felt like much longer. 
"I've seen how every type of company runs their technology — what questions they're asking, what types of things they're looking to do, whether it's machine learning or IOT or networking or database," Salzer told Business Insider. And while gaining new insights on different companies has been fascinating, Salzer also said she's learned a lot about the soft skills needed to flourish in the workplace: how to balance confidence with humility, the value of getting involved, and more. Here are the soft skills that this 23-year-old learned in her first year at Amazon: SEE ALSO: Jeff Bezos runs Amazon with 14 defined leadership principles. Here's how a 23-year-old engineer leveraged 5 of them to land a job. DON'T MISS: 19 soft skills every leader needs to be successful Confidence is one of the most important soft skills  Though Salzer only graduated from college in 2017, she said she often has to talk with leaders of other companies or in front of whole audiences. To be able to do that, Salzer said she maintains confidence in her abilities and shows it when she speaks. "Speaking with authority is really important and having that confidence in your skills," Salzer said. Fran Hauser, media executive, startup investor, and author of "The Myth of the Nice Girl," provided a few quick ways to instantly seem more confident in a recent Business Insider article: Maintain strong eye contact, have good posture, and avoid filler words like "um."
But don't forget to be humble, either  Have you ever been told to avoid being the smartest person in the room? The idea behind that oft-repeated quote is that, even if you think you know everything, you still have a lot to learn — and other people can get you there. Following that, "learn and be curious" is a key tenet at Amazon. As Salzer said it's important for Amazon employees to "have an intellectual humility where you do know a lot, but you are open to being proven wrong." "If you think you're the smartest person in the room and are not open to learning new things, then that's not something that fits at Amazon," Salzer said. There are a few ways to get a conversation started that allows you learn something new. Communications expert Danny Rubin recommended reading up online on the background of who you'll meet before an interview or meeting. Then ask them something like, "I see you spent 15 years as a project manager at Honda. What was it like to work there?"
Remember to always listen  Customer obsession is one of Amazon's leadership principles, and it's truly important for Salzer's work. "We focus on Amazon's customers and always working backwards from what they need and what they're doing," Salzer said. To do that, look to the ever-important soft skill of listening: Be open to new opinions, resist jumping to judgement, and pay full attention when others are speaking. And if you come across a client or a customer (or anyone else, for that matter) who differs from you on an idea, try this phrase from authors Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen in "Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well": "That's interesting. I would like to understand more about why we see this differently."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
| 
0 comments:
Post a Comment