Hiring good employees can be very difficult. Finding the right people requires a mix of soft skills and sometimes specific expertise needed for your business. This list includes 8 qualities of a good worker. It can be helpful for a manager hiring people to work at their company, or a potential employee looking to improve.
1. You are coachable
A great team member can be coached and guided towards improving. This makes you versatile — even if you don’t have the exact skill set needed for success on day one, you can quickly learn and build the necessary skills.
2. You are humble
Even if you do indeed have the skills needed on day one; if you are arrogant, nobody will want to work with you. Great team members are humble and recognize that they always have more to learn.
3. You grow your talents
The best teams are diverse with people that have different strengths and weaknesses. Identify your strongest talents and work diligently to improve them. These can be both soft and hard skills; for example, if you become known as someone who is great at organization, leaders will seek you out when a project needs to be organized. The same goes for building up expertise in digital marketing or customer support.
4. You are in it for the team, not just yourself
As an individual contributor, by definition you are making contributions to the team individually. Well-run teams establish a culture that values the success of the team over that of the individual. Each person’s deliverables are only as good as the team’s overall progress. That means you should be motivated to help your colleagues achieve their individual goals as well.
5. You ask for help
Great team members ask for help when they get stuck. This is a common mark of an “A player”. Instead of wasting time trying to do something inefficiently, you consult others and admit when you need guidance. You are honest in your weekly status updates about concerns, so the team can help you address them.
