One of the most important things employers consider when hiring is if a candidate has the skills necessary to succeed in a workplace environment. This is a key part of what recruiters check for when reviewing CVs and conducting interviews, as someone without the necessary employability skills.
This is a problem for graduates, who despite all the effort to attain their degree, often leave university without these crucial employability skills. This is one of the reasons why graduates struggle so much to find a job after they graduate, no matter how otherwise competent they may be. In this post, we will explain how important employability skills are, and how graduates can learn them in order to make themselves more employable.
Gap in Employability Skills
Employability skills are 9 skills outlined by the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) that will make graduates stand out from other applicants and allow them to thrive in a workplace environment. These skills are:
Business Awareness
This is the ability to know what a business aims to do, what it does to achieve those aims, and what its competitors are. Business awareness is often something interviewers will ask about during interviews, so you should research it before the interview itself.
Communication
Communication is being able to clearly and concisely make your thoughts known to others, either by speaking or writing. This includes both work colleagues and potential clients.
Entrepreneurship
This is being able to spot and take advantage of business opportunities. Entrepreneurship is especially useful for more senior roles where you have to use your own initiative instead of simply following instructions.
IT
IT is being able to use technology in a workplace environment. This includes simple things such as operating a till and more complex things such as coding.
Numeracy
Numeracy is the ability to do mathematics in order to solve problems. This is one skill that is important at a basic level for nearly every job you can apply for and one that you will already be familiar with from school.
Problem-Solving
The ability to solve problems is using logic to resolve issues, both long and short-term. It is something that you will need to use on a daily basis in any working environment.
Resilience
Resilience is about being able to work under pressure and not having your work’s quality be negatively affected. This includes other potential distractions such as events in your personal life.
Self-Management
Self-management is being able to display the correct attitude in a workplace environment. This includes body language, tone of voice and how smartly you are dressed.
Teamwork
This is the ability to work closely with others to achieve the same objective. In a workplace environment, this can include dividing responsibility as well as brainstorming ideas.
While many graduates will have some experience with these skills, such as numeracy and communication, it is very unlikely that they will leave university with enough of these skills to make them stand out to employers. On the other hand, people with any amount of genuine workplace experience will stand out, as they can discuss in interviews times that they have demonstrated these key employability skills.
Importance of soft skills
Soft skills are skills that can’t necessarily be taught in the same way that hard skills can, and include things such as adaptability, empathy and creativity. While these skills are not considered crucial employability skills by the CBI, they are still extremely useful to have, and a job candidate with these skills will stand out to employers.
Many of these skills are often transferable across multiple roles in different sectors. Strong leadership is something that all employers will value highly in any type of job, especially in senior positions and will make a candidate more likely to be hired. Some people will be naturally gifted at these skills, while others have to learn them over time through experience. Soft skills are usually something that makes someone a better person overall, while hard skills make someone more suited to a specific type of role.
Addressing communication challenges
Crucially, however, universities are not making clear to their students how critical these skills are to their chances of getting a graduate job. While universities do have career services that can advise students of their importance, going there is not obligatory. Students instead choose to focus on their degrees, overestimating how important they are to future employers.
This is summed up by Graduate Coach founder Chris Davies who said recently, “I would claim that although graduates get a good academic education, they are not told ever how to gain the skills, the employability skills that they need to get a job. Universities don’t see it as part of their remit…Many of them have got no work experience whatsoever. And with 80 85% of UK graduates getting a first or two one now academic differentiation with a degree is no longer relevant, it’s all about your employability skills and what this report is, is merely highlighting a long-term trend that employers want employability skills, not academic skills.”
While having a degree is a sign of competence, and is necessary in some sectors such as medicine, employers prefer candidates who have workplace experience and have shown that they can use these skills in practical situations. Being able to write perfect essays does not necessarily mean someone is able to perform well in a high-pressure working environment.
Universities need to make clearer how important these skills are, as well as teach their students how to write an effective CV and cover letter, all of which are crucial to making their graduates stand out.
Bridging the gap
One way of bridging the gap between being an inexperienced student and getting a graduate job is through Graduate Coach.
We will give you top-class career coaching which will give you the skills and confidence you need to succeed in a working environment. You will learn digital skills through our digital internship, which are becoming increasingly important in the modern job market. This includes one-to-one coaching with our experts to help figure out which career path is best for you
You will also be taught how to write an effective CV and cover letter and will be given interview coaching, so you will know what questions will likely come up and how to respond.
All of this will help you become a stand-out candidate when you start applying for jobs, and we will continue to offer advice to ensure your career path is going smoothly.
Summary
There is a clear lack of knowledge amongst graduates about what employability skills are and how important they alongside other soft skills are for getting a job. At the same time, they overestimate how important their degrees are to employers, who prefer candidates with experience in a working environment to someone without.
Graduate Coach can help bridge this gap, offering coaching to give graduates the skills and confidence they need to make them more employable and succeed in the workplace.
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