Soft skills get a lot of attention in the modern workplace. Even though these skills are sometimes hard to define – and often resemble personality traits more than skills – the demand for them is constantly increasing. The logic is simple – take two employees with the same level of proficiency with the required set of hard skills, and gauge which one will have more success on the job. Chances are the one with a stronger set of soft skills will.

As someone who is looking to enter the workforce, you must understand that you can start developing these soft skills pretty early in your career. You can start working on them before you even find your first real job, while you’re still a student. Here are some of the most important ones.

Critical Thinking

Let’s avoid the cliché of leading a list of soft skills with leadership and jump straight in the thick of it. A soft skill such as critical thinking is paramount for a simple reason – by the time you finish college, having it might mean the difference between having a job or being unemployed. The way automation is going, the ability to think critically and creatively will be what makes you a more valuable hire than a robot or an algorithm.

Leadership

Leadership is a soft skill that some employees will need in the workplace. But having it as a general requirement for every new hire? We can’t all be leaders in an organization, so what gives?

The thing about leadership is that a good leader knows how to elevate the people around them and make them better. It’s incredibly valuable to have good leaders, and businesses will want as many hires with this skill as possible to have the most flexibility with whom they advance up the ladder.

Teamwork

Teamwork might seem like a consolidation prize for the people who don’t manage to become leaders, but it’s not. It’s a seriously important skill. With more and more teams working remotely, it’s getting increasingly harder for people to work as a team, no matter how many communication tools are thrown at them. Having strong teamwork skills will help you adapt quickly to any workplace and team configuration.

Problem Solving

Much like critical thinking, problem-solving is one of those uniquely human things that will keep AIs from taking our jobs for at least a while longer. Made of equal parts of analysis and creative thinking, problem-solving is the skill that will teach you how to approach problems, which methods you can use to crack them, and how to look for outside and unexpected solutions.

Accountability

It might look like accountability isn’t the best soft skill to have in a corporate, cutthroat world. Some people might indeed want to use it against you, or at the very least won’t mind seeing you falling on your sword after a mistake that wasn’t entirely yours.

It’s just that, if you have good accountability, you won’t have issues pointing out that mistake wasn’t completely yours. You won’t have problems owning up to the mess you left in your wake, either, but you won’t let others use you as a scapegoat. To be accountable is not about being a martyr or shielding others. It’s about fostering and promoting an atmosphere of owning one’s mistakes.