If you are ready to head out into the construction industry because you have the proper training for operating heavy equipment and machinery, or you have the proper certifications for a specific job you may need to brush up on your soft skills. Without the proper soft skills training, you will not be able to land that job that you trained for. Soft skills involve content in three critical areas – interpersonal skills, logical skills, and communication skills.

Interpersonal skills involve collaboration and successful teamwork while logic skills involve your decision-making and critical thinking and communication skills pertaining to listing and speaking. You will need all these skills to have a successful job interview, and you will also need these skills to be able to handle daily tasks out in the field and to work well with others. After all, construction is a team effort.

When you go to a training school to learn how to be a professional driver, to become a crane operator or a signalperson or how to operate that heavy equipment, you will most likely have some soft skills training as well. Most schools take their role seriously and will work to ensure that you are prepared to enter the workforce and succeed in your career choice. Soft skills are needed to succeed on all levels.

How To Find Work

With soft skills training, you will learn the best approaches to finding work. This can include job hunt techniques, resume building, application completion, and basic communication skills that are necessary for a successful job interview. Soft skills training should include going over possible interview questions and knowing the best way to answer them. You want to be honest and straightforward when responding to interview questions, so this kind of training can help you prepare for those situations.

When you attend Associated Training Services, you will learn all the different aspects of your chosen field. Plus, you will sharpen up your soft skills. To learn more about ATS, call (800) 383-7364 today.

There are many reasons why it’s a good idea to get your heavy equipment operator training at ATS, but high on the list are the Career Services offered to every student. These services are important because they give you the skills and the support to find jobs, apply with impressive resumes, and interview well. If you don’t get through the hiring process, you don’t get the job even though you are qualified.

Job Leads Database & Website

Every ATS graduate has FREE access to a database with the contact information for openings all over the country and is consistently updated. That means a student can search for a job in a specific location or a particular occupation

In addition to the database, ATS graduates have been taught how to use the Career Services website, where potential employers search for new hires. This point of contact lets companies and job applicants make direct contact.

Individual Career Counseling

Early in training, you will meet with the National Career Services Coordinator. By graduation, there will be a packet of helpful items prepared based on that interview. It will include a list of potential employers in your target area and documentation on your specific skills and training.

The Coordinator is available to all students and graduates who need help with their job search, no matter how long ago that graduation was.

Soft Skills

The ability to network, write a resume, navigate the application process, and impress at the interview are “soft skills” that get you smoothly through the hiring process and on the job. Many ATS instructors have been in the industry as foremen, superintendents, and small business owners. Because they have been on the hiring side, they know what your potential employer is looking for.

The Career Services Department gives you the advantage of tools, resources, and skills so that you get the job you are trained and qualified to do.

Soft skills are things like writing resumes, filling out applications, interview skills, and stuff like that. Soft skills probably won’t be needed once you get hired to operate heavy equipment, although many jobs will require being able to navigate software or do paperwork. Soft skills might not seem too important until the lack of these skills keeps you from getting hired.

You see, many times, your resume and application are screened by a computer first, so a mistake can kick it right out of the running. Simple things like a typo can make a huge difference. So can having the right keywords in your resume, because the screener will be looking for words that match the job description. Therefore, application procedures are part of the training at ATS.

After that, in a large company you might be interviewed by someone in HR who works inside all day. Even if they got your name from your postings on Total Resources Network and trust your training at ATS, there will be some evaluation based on how you dress, speak, and act during the interview.

One of the words that comes up in a discussion of “soft skills” is networking. Networking is basically your people skills, and building relationships that are appropriate and professional with the idea that you will be running into these people repeatedly during your career. A network of people help each other. Some are just acquaintances, others are friends and coworkers. But when suggestions for job openings come up, they can give you a lead. Or you can help them by providing a reference about their reliability. Everyone you meet could potentially be part of your network.

For instance, your instructors at ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School are good sources of information about how to find jobs, and the resources needed. They know because they’ve got experience as business owners, foremen, and superintendents on job sites. During your training they are great additions to your network.

Soft skills aren’t things that you use once and then ignore. All the soft skills you learn at ATS will help you in many ways your whole life long. Our Career Services have been designed from years of experience, and we have found that graduates who use the soft skills they developed at ATS go on to succeed in whatever they do.

Associated Training Services (ATS) Heavy Equipment Operator Training School is one of the best places in the country to get trained for the job you want with heavy equipment. It’s also one of the best at helping you find the job that’s right for you, get through the application process successfully, and be prepared for an interview.

Find the job that’s right for you

As soon as you start your training at ATS, our Career Services personnel start working with you to provide personal career counseling. This can end up being a lifelong friendship because you get continued career help after graduation if you want it. The beginning of that career help is the entrance interview to establish career goals, industries you are interested in, and even the geographic location you’d like to be working in. You’ll get a job packet with a list of employers in that location and any other information that would be helpful in your chosen career.

Get through the application process successfully

One of the challenges of finding a job after you graduate is figuring out where the openings are. The ATS Job Leads Database is constantly being updated. You see a few every Saturday on this blog. But as a graduate, you have access to the whole thing and can search job leads by state, city, or zip code. Our ATS Career Services website lets you search by job descriptions too, and you can apply right from the site. You can post your resume (we teach you how to write a good one) and the employers can find YOU too.

Be prepared for an interview

It isn’t enough to know how to do the job if you flunk the job search process. So ATS trains students in the “soft skills” that a successful job search takes – like interview skills, networking, how to write resumes, application processes, and all the rest of it. Your ATS instructor has worked in their field and gone through the hoops to get a job out there, too. All our instructors are skilled and experienced and teach from that experience, including how they found their jobs and what that process was like.

Our Career Services are an important part of the package you get when you come to ATS.

In a lot of ways, a graduate of ATS Heavy Equipment Operator Training School has got hard skills and soft skills. Knowing how to identify soil, read a grade, understand site layout management, etc. while competently maintaining and safely operating a wide variety of heavy equipment is the stuff you will be doing every day for the life of your job. That’s hard, but that’s why training is important. The “hard” skills are the ones you use on the job.

But in order to actually get that job, you need some “soft” skills. These are things you won’t necessarily be doing on the job so it is easy to overlook them in preparing for a career. But ATS doesn’t overlook those soft skills; they are included in your training. Our Career Services office starts working with students from the beginning, helping to create a plan for what happens after your training is complete. Part of that plan is going to involve these three “soft” skills:

• application procedures
• networking methods
• interviewing techniques

You will probably appreciate the value of the second, networking, throughout your career because it is always going to be important to stay connected to people. But in the job-search sense, it is a soft skill because you don’t use it all the time while doing your job. You won’t be applying for a job every day, either, or interviewing. But each of these skills can get you hired.

They get you hired because they help you get through the filters an employer uses to narrow down who will be interviewed, and then they help you give a good impression of your abilities when you interview. If your application isn’t submitted properly, the computer will reject it before a person ever sees it. If the references on your resume aren’t so great (networking), then you might not get called in for the interview. And if you are not able to show how you will be an asset to the company at the interview, you probably won’t get hired.

So our Career Services works with you as part of the training, helping you develop those soft skills while you are learning the hard skills that will keep you employed as a successful professional heavy equipment operator.

Mention the word heavy equipment operator and most people think of a big barreled hairy chest male, probably wearing a hard hat and a singlet. Soft skills – there’s nothing soft about a heavy equipment operator. Right? These days, that image is far from the truth – in fact, there are many women operating heavy equipment, but soft skills have nothing to do with being soft. Soft skills are those areas relating to how you interact with others.

In the workplace, soft skills include how you frame job applications and resumes, how you conduct yourself during interviews, how you work as part of a team and your interaction in that team, and can even include leadership skills. Do heavy equipment operators need these skills? If you’re new to the industry then they certainly won’t hurt. An old-but-still-relevant report from the University of Minnesota puts it quite clearly when it comes to work in general:

While jobs in today’s economy require that employees be able to solve problems, use technology, and be proficient in reading, writing, math, and speaking skills, it is the soft skills that seem to make the difference in whether or not an employer hires and keeps someone on the job (Bremer & Madzar, 1995; Rentner, 2001)

Research over the years has demonstrated that soft skills can improve job seeking success rates by anything up to 85%, which is understandable given the emphasis placed on training people how to apply for job vacancies to their best advantage. When it comes heavy equipment training, the core training is on operating heavy equipment and heavy equipment safety, however, if a training organization also offers soft skills training, don’t snub that training – it could make the difference between a successful heavy equipment career, and being on the wrong end of job application reject letters.