Employability Skills and Graduate Attributes Skills and Attributes ‘Skills’ are things that you can do and that you can demonstrate that you can do. Having the appropriate ‘employability skills’ is really important for entering the working world. This is because employers normally recruit people on the basis that they have the skills to do the job. Employers will often list the skills they are looking for in a person specification for a job. When you apply for a job you will need to show that you have all the skills they are looking for. There are certain very common skills that employers look for, and while you are studying it is a good idea to prepare for the working world by making sure that you are developing these skills. ‘Attributes’ are personality traits and are equally important when applying for jobs. Although employers will often primarily look to see that you have the skills to do a job, when it comes to selecting the right person for the job the element that often sets a candidate aside are their personality attributes. Indeed it is common for employers to say that they are often willing to recruit someone who doesn’t have exactly the right skills as long as they have the right attributes. Personality attributes are also sometimes called the ‘motivational component’ to skills – by this we mean that we don’t just ‘collect’ skills like we would stamps for a stamp collection, skills are developed and in order to develop skills we need to develop the right personality attributes. So, for example, if we are able to respond positively when we are under pressure we are more likely to learn from our experiences.
Employability Skills We use our skills in every area of our life – we use research and writing skills in our studies, we use cleaning and financial skills in our day-to-day lives, we use social and communication skills in our social lives. Jobs are no different, and every job requires skills. When we apply for jobs it is really important that we are able to identify the kinds of skills an employer is looking for and then demonstrate that we have these skills. We can make ourselves more employable by making sure that we develop a range of skills and that we have examples of times when we have used these skills. A particularly good way to start is by looking at the ‘top skills’ employers ask for and identifying which skills we are particularly strong at and which ones we could develop further.