The perceived lack of capabilities and skills continues to be a barrier to entrepreneurship. Particularly challenging for young people is gaining the relevant knowledge and skills through education. Entrepreneurial skills maximize the chance to create successful business ventures. These include creative thinking, problem-solving decision-making, professional dedication to the work contract, motivation, and much more.
Creating and managing a business successfully is increasingly dependent on developing and honing entrepreneurial skills in this digital age. Aspiring entrepreneurs can learn and develop these skills through professional and expert guidance and training.
Steps to develop entrepreneurial competencies:
- Competency Identification and Recognition
The first step towards developing entrepreneurial competenciesis understanding what it is like to have these characteristics. It does not mean that the process ends after gaining understanding. Instead, you need to determine what exact characteristics you wish to imbue within you based on your specific needs. For instance, you might have the quality of being a risk-taker, but you lack leadership. Hence, you need to develop leadership skills.
- Development Intervention
Building entrepreneurial competencies go together with building a specific set of characteristics and traits. For example, you may feel the need for financial and business skills to create a venture and get yourself trained. Developing an invention can be a game-changer since it fills your entrepreneurial personality gaps.
- Competency Assessment
Competency Assessment is an assessment of a person’s characteristics and the required set of skills. An individual doesn’t always need to complete a competency assessment themself but can also be done through the feedback of others. When you start acting like a real business owner, the goal is to plug the gaps between previously acquired competencies and the new requirements.
- Competency Mapping
Competency mapping involves evaluating and analyzing personal strengths and weaknesses. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses can help you focus better and move faster towards entrepreneurial competencies. Perhaps you feel that your communication skills aren’t sharp, but you are proficient at financials and budgeting. In this way, you can assess which skill needs more attention and which does not.
- Gaining knowledge and understanding
An individual can start developing the necessary competencies with experience. Whether you hire an expert or go online, the choice is yours. These new competencies with help you deal with challenging situations.
- Comparison of competencies
Competencies are much broader than skills since they encompass a variety of skill sets along with abilities and knowledge. Comparison is inevitable in developing entrepreneurial competencies as it helps people focus on a particular type of proficiency or skill that they feel will help them develop entrepreneurial abilities.
- Recognizing competency
Entrepreneurial competencies blend creativity, initiative, problem-solving, financial and technological knowledge, and the ability to marshal resources. Recognizing the competency enables an entrepreneur to perform better in specific tasks.
- Self-assessment
By conducting an honest and detailed self-assessment, entrepreneur competencies learners may increase their chances of business success. They may be able to identify business opportunities that are right for them by considering personal traits. For instance, skills, experience, expertise, financial goals, likes and dislikes, ability to sacrifice, and willingness to take on challenges are some of the few factors to be considered during assessment. It also helps in the faster development of the lacking entrepreneurial competencies.
- Application in real-life situations
It isn’t necessary for individuals building entrepreneurial competencies to use them within defined boundaries as these must be often showcased in the real world. That’s how you will become confident. A display of confidence and continuity in applying newly acquired behaviours, skills, and characteristics ensures success.
- Feedback
Feedback is essential for applying entrepreneurship competencies to obtain tangible results and bring out positive changes. It is up to an individual to assess and decide whether the rewards of having newly acquired entrepreneurial skills are satisfactory or not. They can pace their progress accordingly.
Today, there are various platforms available for getting certified in employability skills, including the development of an ‘entrepreneurial mindset’. Wadhwani Opportunity is one such platform that offers training completely free of cost.
Apply today to excel in your career:
https://opportunity.wfglobal.org/21st-century-skills/
(For students who are ready to take up a job or professionals who have just started their career)