Express ideas clearly, listen actively, and adapt your message to your audience.
Communication skills are the ability to convey information clearly and effectively, both in speaking and writing, while also understanding what others are trying to say. In a placement context, it covers everything from how you explain a project in your resume to how you answer a panel of interviewers under pressure.
Structuring spoken answers so the main point comes first, followed by supporting detail, instead of thinking out loud.
Writing emails, documentation, and resume bullets that get to the point without losing important context.
Reading body language and tone in interviews and meetings, and being conscious of your own posture and eye contact.
Explaining the same technical concept differently to a fellow engineer versus a non-technical interviewer.
During a group project, two teammates were building the same feature because a task update was buried in a long chat thread.
You proposed moving task ownership to a shared board with one line per task, and started every stand-up with a 30-second summary of blockers, which cut duplicate work to zero for the rest of the project.