DEVELOPING YOUR SKILLS AND IMPROVING YOUR EMPLOYABILITY AS AN OFFICER IN A STUDENT ASSOCIATION

About Steve Price

Steve Price is a Chartered Engineer, has a Master’s degree in Engineering, Manufacture and Management from the University of Manchester, and a business education from Cranfield and Oxford universities. After 18 years in the chemical industry, in operations roles, project management, and senior functional (IT) management, Steve realised he had more than a passing interest in developing people.

He became Executive Director of the EIIL, where he developed its workshop programme and unique ‘Masterclass’ interview-based learning style. He specialises in coaching high potential technologists towards senior management positions in the chemicals, plastics, engineering and energy industries.

Since 2007 he has been a member of the Advisory Board of JEE the European Confederation of Junior Enterprises, was in 2018 appointed to the Advisory Board of the World Council for Junior Enterprise and is also engaged as a mentor for European Young Engineers, and has contributed as an expert on talent and skills development to the Consultative Committee for Industrial Change at the European Economic and Social Committee.

About Eiil

We’re a non-profit association of industrial companies who research leadership issues then develop our members’ talents to face these issues. As with many associations we exist as a series of member committees, steered by an Advisory Board of senior leaders in our members’ organisations, which coordinate programmes of activities to develop the skills and knowledge of their future leaders. These include member-run activities to attract new talent into a career in industry. Over the years we have developed partnerships with student associations who we believe will have amongst their membership, future leaders of European industry.

There are various dictionary definitions, but at EIIL we consider a skill to be ‘an ability to do something well, at the right time, which can be improved by practice’.

There are other definitions which may differ slightly, often with the ‘right time’ element, but generally we accept that skill is something which some people have and not others, but that anyone who takes an interest in learning a skill, can develop it with practice.

Employers need leadership skills at all levels in the organisation; wherever there are teams of people there is a leadership need. It can even be argued that whatever the hierarchy, or lack of, whoever is speaking and changing the behaviours of a team is leading the team at that time. Not surprisingly, leadership skills are in high demand. A list of desired leadership skills in a job advert might include, but would not be limited to, effective team-working, thinking critically, or creatively, cultural sensitivity, effective communication; all personal capabilities which enable someone to interact effectively and harmoniously with other people to achieve a desired purpose.

Such skills are often called ‘soft’ skills, which we don’t like, since it’s often confused with ‘simple’ or ‘easy’, and they’re not either. The ‘soft’ skills required for leadership are often complex, with many components, which means that, taken together, they may be hard to assess and difficult to measure progress.

But just as a violinist must be able to break down and perfect their bowing technique, finger placement, playing soft, hard, slowly, quietly, staccato, and must be able to combine all these elements of their skill at will, whenever needed, so soft skills are made up of components; all able to be practised and developed independently, and then called on to be used, in the right combination to achieve the desired effect when required.

But where do you start? Sticking with the music metaphor, a novice violinist will not become a good concert violinist simply by sitting in an orchestra pit and being given a Stradivarius. Before playing a complicated concert piece, a novice must begin by repeatedly practising scales and simple pieces in order to build up the required skills. And similarly, simply exposing someone to a situation where leadership skills are required does not make them acquire these skills. Expertise in the complex (soft) skills required for leadership is developed through practice; on simple stuff first, and with friends and colleagues around you, sometimes more experienced, sometimes less, to give you feedback as you practise. An employer seeks candidates who can already demonstrate, or who show potential to develop over their career, a range of skills which they require in their organisation, Employers, or sadly increasingly the recruitment agency they’ve engaged, are able to assess a candidate’s academic skills from their degree certificate, the establishment from which it came, the curriculum followed, and grade achieved.

A candidate’s leadership skills are less easy to assess. So, if you’re invited to an interview, it helps to be able to demonstrate to your potential employer that you’ve already successfully faced a situation where you’ve used them. If you’re still a student, you might not normally have had such experiences..

But the great thing about universities (and I mean real physical universities, and why employers should help resist any trends towards increasingly online universities) is that they provide large concentrations of young people with time on their hands (between studies) and this time needs to be filled with some (useful) activities. And the student associations and societies which meet this need provide the perfect practice ground for developing leadership skills.

Almost two years ago, the EIIL started an initiative which we called the Future Leaders Dialogue. Five EIIL members, alumni of our masterclass programme, and five ‘officers’ of the European representative bodies of some of Europe’s leading student societies, got together to do something ‘better than any of us could do on our own’.

I had the privilege of working with this organising committee every couple of weeks over the last two years. I’ve been working with young talent at the EIIL since 2003, and with student organisations since 2006, and I’ve drawn some personal conclusions about where and how people develop their leadership skills. These have been strongly reinforced by my experience with these exceptional young people.

In my experience, most student associations organise activities for their ordinary members, and these are usually related to the theme of the society. It might help ordinary members learn something about engineering, or chemistry, or entrepreneurship, or whatever is the main theme of the society. There is often an element of networking, usually assisted by refreshments; sometimes alcohol is involved. Unfortunately, many recruiter’s main recollection of the student societies in their own university times, and a source of some unconscious bias, is that they are simply places to ‘have fun’ (sometimes even ‘instead of studying’).

But there is a serious side. The people organising these activities, the ‘local Officers’, learn useful leadership skills. Often their experiences start with first helping the team putting on one of their activities. Even coordinating food and drinks delivery and distribution, is a skills development opportunity. They might then move on to project manage a future event, with all the challenges of managing a budget, suppliers (speakers) and an uncertain market of participants. Often this requires coordinating the efforts of a small team of other volunteers.

They might then move to managing the society itself to ensure that there are sufficient new members each year, and new officers coming through to run activities for them, developing partnerships and raising sponsorship and support for their activities to ensure the sustainability of the society.

Some of the larger societies have local chapters of their society at each university with local Officers responsible as above. But then these local Officers get together nationally to align strategies and coordinate national level activities. And the Officers organising these National Organisations learn additional skills because they have to do all these same things across a national network, and with national level partners. And local Officers attending national officers’ meetings have to learn to network, lobby and influence their peers to represent the interests of their own local members within the national strategy.

And, as with those in our Future Leaders Dialogue steering committee, the European Officers of these organisations require these same skills but at an international level, with all of the complications of having to manage all the different cultures in an international network, and with international level partners and other stakeholders.

And, it should be particularly noted, they are required to exercise their leadership without any of the usual levers a leader in a major multinational organisation can deploy. An international student Officer still has a team of volunteers, few if any of them able to be motivated by rewardbased incentives or promises of future career advancement.

However… and at this point in all the good TV cooking shows, when the judges have said all the positive things, ‘however’ precedes a long pause….. When it comes to job interviews, candidates fail to recognise and value, and therefore fail to convey the highly developed and eminently transferable leadership skills which their student society roles have helped them develop.

Most students who have worked at Officer level in student associations, local, national or European, will have some great examples of their experiences to refer to in interviews. And, as EIIL’s first Future Leaders Dialogue conference last April found, it is largely unknown amongst students that the leadership skills learned in their society’s Local Officer positions are those not normally developed by company recruits until they’ve been in the company for at least a year. And the skills required to be effective in National and European Officer level roles, might not normally be developed for another 3 to 5 years.

So, if you’re a job-seeker, and you’ve been in such a role, and you’ve done it effectively, there is every chance that you have developed some very soughtafter leadership skills.

But the challenge is to make recruiters, who might not have any understanding of your organisations, more aware of the activities they do, and the skill development opportunities they provide. Students have got to get better at showing not just what you know, but what you have done.

Don’t be shy. Engage recruiters in a conversation and get your point across - that if they want to find graduates with already well-developed leadership skills, they should look more closely at the senior officers in your student societies.

And then, when they offer you a job, you’ll hit the ground running - you’ll be years ahead of your workplace peers.

So, if you’ve still got time during your studies and you want to develop some highly recruitable skills, take an active not a passive role; step up and take responsibility for running your student society.

Your society needs you, but your future career and future employers need the leadership skills you’ll develop there.

P.S. And one final thing - just think - after university you will spend a significant part of the next sixty years, often 8 - 12 hours per day, at work. So, if you are concerned enough to be making changes now to your personal lifestyle and consumer habits to make sure there is a planet habitable for your children, please also make sure that, whichever career you decide on, choose an employer where you can spend your working life as part of the climate change solution and not part of the problem.