Close
The ability to communicate, interact and build relationships with others.
Explore your understanding
Interpersonal skills are used in a variety of contexts on a daily basis. These might include taking part in a seminar, delivering a presentation or working on a group project.
Employers are looking for candidates who can communicate effectively, interact with others within a team, and build positive working relationships with colleagues.
Understanding more about your own ability to communicate and being able to adapt your style to different situations and audiences is a key part of developing your interpersonal skills.
Develop your interpersonal skills
Wondering where can you improve your interpersonal skills? We've highlighted a number of ways and places you can develop this skill here at UCL.
Practice interacting with employers directly
Attending a session delivered by employers and alumni will help you to develop your skills in communicating and interacting with others through practicing networking with recruiters, improve interview skills, receive 1-1 feedback on CVs and applications, and work with other students in practice assessment centre activities and workshops. Find out more and join us for an employer-led skills session.
Book to attend a networking event
Collaborate with others via the great networking opportunities to develop your skills in communicating and interacting through making connections with like-minded peers and building your network. Attend a networking session for entrepreneurs with UCL Innovation and Enterprise to see for yourself.
Join a club or society
Joining a club or society within the Students’ Union is a great opportunity to develop your communication skills and receive further training. It’s a great way to work closely with others on shared goals in a social setting – whether it’s chairing a meeting or negotiating change – or even discussing a book as part of the UCL Book Club, taking part in a discussion as part of the Debating Society, or joining the Communication Society. They also offer a great range of workshops open to all students.
Also within the Students' Union, UCL’s Volunteering Services Unit partners with more than 400 local charities to promote their volunteering opportunities. Use the Volunteering Service’s skills explorer to find volunteering opportunities where you can develop new skills and build on existing ones. It’s a great tool to use in conjunction with your wider career planning.
Search volunteering opportunities
Explore a huge range of information resources
The Career Discovery Feed contains articles written by UCL Careers with you in mind, and a broad range of articles from TARGETjobs designed to help you research different skills and options, and find practical tips on topics including networking and preparing for interviews.
Widening Participation
Becoming a student ambassador with the UCL Widening Participation Office will give you the chance to meet other UCL students from a wide range of courses and backgrounds and develop your interpersonal skills. UCL students who are involved in Widening Participation activities receive appropriate training and gain experience of working with young people.
Use LinkedIn Learning to grow your skillset
LinkedIn Learning has a huge range of video courses supporting learning in software, creative and business skills – all free to UCL staff and currently enrolled students. Access LinkedIn learning content on how you can build your Interpersonal skills.
Travel to improve your interpersonal skills
Attend an event to learn more about the global opportunities available both short term and longer term as part of your degree. UCL Go Abroad programmes encompass an enriching selection of worldwide opportunities tailored to support UCL students to perform at their full potential and further develop their Interpersonal skills.
Learn a new language
Learn a language and make connections with others within the Centre for Languages and International Education (CLIE). Try an evening language class or a Summer course to build your interpersonal skills.
Improve your speaking and writing skills
The UCL Academic Communication Centre is a new support service to help with your writing and speaking skills. The opportunities here are discipline specific and include tailored workshops for native and non native English speakers.
UCL Academic Communication Centre
Developing your interpersonal skills as a Researcher
Build confidence networking with peers and professionals and learn more about how this skill can be important in an industry setting even at PhD level. The UCL Doc Skills Programme is open to all postgraduate research students at UCL. Here postgraduate researchers will be able to access courses to further develop skills and build confidence in networking with peers /professionals and learn more about how this skill can be important in an industry setting even at PhD level. You’ll find more information on all the courses available.
UCL Doctoral Skills Development Programme
You will also be able to browse the scheduled events for researchers and those for doctoral students. Research students can also access courses mapped to the Researcher Development Framework (RDF) and one-to-one advice, practice interviews and workshops tailored to researchers.
Prepare your examples
Ask yourself:
Do you have a group project that you have worked on, and learnt skills from? Think about a time where you listened to the opinions of someone else. How did you respond to them? Have you noticed a time where a colleague has not been communicating as much? What steps could you take? What did you learn from this?
Next steps:
Visit our Interview Skills page for more support on how to structure answers as part of an interview. Here you can find out more about how to structure your answer and demonstrate your skills along with many more resources that will help you prepare.
How to demonstrate your skills in an interview
If you have written a draft application for any type of opportunity, our team can provide personalised and practical tips/ advice to help you better understand how recruiters will shortlist your application, and how you can best demonstrate your motivation and your most relevant skills/experience.