Santander Skills: courses to acquire the soft skills that make a difference

If you take a look at employment websites, you'll find that the job offers no longer only ask for a specific qualification. For example, "a degree in Finance is required and an MBA is desirable" now goes together with other requirements such as: "requires strategic vision, leadership skills, a proactive outlook", etc. 

This is because nowadays, 9 out of every 10 companies have problems recruiting professionals with the suitable soft skills, according to the Bridging the Soft Skills Gap report. However, it is precisely here where Santander Courses can help to develop the necessary skills to turn you into the perfect candidate for any company. 

What are skills courses?

In a society where technology rules, the workforce has to reinvent itself and acquire new skills and competencies that machines are not capable of. In fact, according to one report published by economists Ziad Daoud and Scott Johnson in 2020, robots will carry out around 800 million jobs globally in the coming years. 

However, to avoid being replaced by an android or by software, there are various skills courses available to you. These training initiatives focus on enabling the participants to acquire such soft skills as the current market needs. In other words, unlike traditional training, which focuses on learning the technical aspects of a specific career field, these skills courses are designed so that you can add skills to your CV that allow you to develop yourself further in the workplace, bringing that something extra that a machine cannot provide. 

Specifically, we are speaking of leadership, communication, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, time management, emotional control, strategic vision, and more. 

What Santander Skills Courses are available?

Being aware of the constant changes underway in the workplace, Banco Santander, through Santander Universities, is offering the chance for professionals of any age to continue to learn and develop the soft skills they need to enhance their employability. Which Santander Skills Courses are available for you to make your CV stand out in the current highly competitive job market?

Santander Course | Business For All - Harvard Business School Publishing

Within Santander Skills Courses, you can find the Santander Course | Business for All 2024. Consists of 5,000 seats aimed at people who want to improve their skills and take on the world of work. 

With this course, you will gain access to a 100% online, 9-week training course on which you will acquire the key know-how and skills to develop your career. And depending on your career goals, you can choose one of these courses on offer:

• Business Fundamentals: you will learn the fundamentals in core areas such as finance and marketing to make decisions, communicate with other units and align your work with good business practices. You will also learn to set targets, collect and analyse data, and use measurement to better understand and manage individual and team performance. This way you will better understand your customers so you can meet their changing needs and improve their experience. Finally, you will learn to prepare and conduct effective negotiations and how to balance competing interests.

• Managing yourself: you will learn to evaluate alternatives that generate better results and to more effectively manage time to improve decision making. Moreover, you will learn how to build trust and how to put into practice your influencing skills. You will discover how to properly build your career, understanding yourself, identifying opportunities in setbacks, and making learning a lifelong habit.

As with previous Santander Skills Courses, this certified course is delivered fully online, in English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, with on-demand content, live sessions, virtual debates, interaction with other colleagues and practical exercises through which to apply the learning delivered by experts from Harvard Business School Publishing, one of the most prestigious educational institutions in the world. 

So, if you are a professional over 18 years old - whether or not you have a university degree - and you reside in Argentina, Germany, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Poland, the United Kingdom, the United States or Uruguay, you can sign up for the Santander Course | Business for All 2024 before June 10th, 2024. Now's the perfect time to acquire or improve your skills and knowledge in areas such as Marketing, Finance, Negotiation or Customer Management!

What impact will Santander Skills Courses have on your professional development?

Nowadays, having soft skills is not just a way to develop your career, it's basically a must-have if you want to enter the job market. In this respect, according to the What Workers Want 2020 report by the human resources consulting company Hays, soft skills are what most influence recruitment decisions, above the so-called hard skills. 

Ultimately, besides impacting recruitment, they also have an affect on performance. According to the 2019 Global Talent Trends report by LinkedIn, 89% of recruiters say that when a professional isn't the correct fit for their job, it's usually down to a lack of soft skills. Bearing this in mind, it's no surprise that some 94% of Human Resources experts admit that a staff member with good soft skills will be more likely to get promoted to positions of responsibility than others with greater experience but less developed soft skills, as indicated by the report The Soft Skills Job Seekers Need Now, by iCIMS Hiring Insights. 

Soft skills are basically the key to getting promoted to managerial and leadership positions. So if you'd like to make a qualitative leap in the workplace, check out the Santander Course | Business for All 2024 to acquire the skills and knowledge you need in order to develop your career.