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“Professional” skills is such a broad category that these skills are going to find uses in virtually every major industry or field, making them valuable skills to pick up during your career training process. While it is likely that you will need to learn more than just the basics of “professional” skills, these business skills will help you find generalist and specialized work, and they will help you navigate your office workplace with ease. Whether you are looking to build up on your existing job skills or you have aspirations to work in a managerial role, learning professional skills is a good first step to help improve your odds of success

What Are Professional Skills?

Professional skills refer to any generally useful soft skills that can be applied in a traditional office setting. While the term is vague, here are a few examples of common soft skills that we would think of as professional in nature

Communication: The ability to communicate effectively and directly is an important interpersonal skill for anyone working in an office setting to learn. This can help make collaborative projects easier, defuse tensions in a workplace setting, and avoid mishaps caused by individuals’ getting their wires crossed during crunch time.
Professional Writing: Related to communication, it is important for anyone who is working in a collaborative office setting to learn how to write effectively as well. Learning how to write emails, craft memoranda, or create presentations is as important as learning direct verbal communication skills.
Organization: It is vital that your office space remain organized, especially if you are working as part of a team or you are overseeing the work of other office employees. Learning techniques for organizing your data, files, documents, and records will help you work more efficiently and complete tasks faster and with fewer hiccups.
Basic Computer Literacy: Knowing the basics of programs like Word, Access, PowerPoint, and Excel can go a long way towards speeding up the regular tasks you run into during a day at the office. Even something as simple as learning a handful of keyboard shortcuts will pay dividends over time as you work more efficiently.

What Are the Job Titles for Employees Trained in Professional Skills?

While many jobs that require professional skills development don’t primarily focus on those skills (they supplement other training such as a Marketing Manager needing to understand organizational and communication skills), there are a number of common, entry-level jobs that leverage professional office skills as their primary qualifications. These include:

Administrative Assistants: These professionals, who include office assistants and secretaries, make sure that the day-to-day business or administrative tasks of an office run smoothly. They can be tasked with handling everything from meeting schedules to deadlines on submissions to organizing and maintaining the regular workflow of a team of assistants. They may work for an individual or a company, which will impact their specific job responsibilities.
Customer Service Representatives: Customer service reps interface directly with customers on a variety of different issues that depend largely on the industry in which they are working. They need to be organized and effective communicators to assist customers and keep them happy, and they need a solid understanding of their institutional hierarchy so that they can direct customers to the right person for their needs.
Office Clerks: Office clerks primarily handle the record-keeping at firms or offices that generate significant amounts of data that need to be accessed and organized quickly and efficiently. They may find work in healthcare, legal offices, or accounting firms (among other professional offices).
Receptionists: Receptionists interface with customers upon their arrival at an office, and they help direct them to where they need to go. This can include intake receptionists at a doctor's office or dentist, for example, or it can be a building receptionist who helps direct visitors to the area of the building they are looking for.

Top Industries and Employers in the United States

These skills are used in almost every industry, but the most common entry-level positions tend to cluster in a handful of industries. These professionals can find work in:

Corporate Offices: Unsurprisingly, this is the most common place to find administrative assistance and customer service reps. Their individual job responsibilities will be heavily dependent on their particular employers.
Government Agencies: Government agencies need to keep a strong institutional memory, and they need to run smoothly, meaning they will need professionals who are skilled in organizational practices. Customer service support roles are also common.
Schools and Universities: Large universities are functionally tiny cities, and they employ hundreds of administrators, secretaries, and assistants who keep everything running as smoothly as possible.
Hospitals and Healthcare: Like government agencies, hospitals require significant administrative oversight to collect, organize, and manage patient data and records for things like prescriptions and surgeries. They also need to work with insurance administrators to ensure that money changes hands smoothly.
Retail/Ecommerce: In addition to the need to ensure that company records are well maintained and that projects go off without difficulty, retail chains and ecommerce stores will need to employ liaisons with significant customer relationship skills.

An Overview of Average Salaries in Major Cities

City	Administrative Assistant Salary	Customer Service Rep Salary
New York City	~$50,000	~$45,000
Los Angeles	~$49,000	~$37,000
Chicago	~$46,000	~$38,000
Houston	~$39,000	~$35,000
Atlanta	~$42,000	~$36,000
Denver	~$44,000	~$37,000
Miami	~$42,000	~$33,000
Seattle	~$52,000	~$41,000
Austin	~$44,000	~$35,000
San Francisco	~$52,000	~$44,000

These figures assume entry-level positions in median-salary industries. Average salaries will be higher for professionals with significant experience, specialized skills, or who are working in fields with a significant presence in the city such as tech (in San Francisco), Finance (in NYC), or the entertainment industry (in Los Angeles).

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Learn More About Professional Courses

What Are Professional Skills?

What Are the Job Titles for Employees Trained in Professional Skills?

Top Industries and Employers in the United States

An Overview of Average Salaries in Major Cities

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