Employability skills (sometimes called ‘soft’ skills) refer to a set of transferable skills and key personal attributes which are highly valued by employers and essential for effective performance in the workplace. Unlike professional or technical skills, these employability skills are generic in nature, rather than job-specific, and are common to all work roles and workplaces across all industry types - for instance, communication and teamwork. Show Academic qualifications and good marks are not the only way to successfully engage at university. You should also gain experiences to enhance your employability skills, as these experiences will also provide you with skill examples for your job applications. While at university:
Why identify your employability skills?Knowing how to speak about your skills is an important skill in itself! Incorporate relevant examples of your skills into job applications and interviews to increase your chances of success when applying for jobs. Taking the time to identify your employability skills can help you to:
How to spot your employability skills1. Start by listing all the activities you have been involved in through study, work and extracurricular opportunities. If your studies involved work experience, clinical placements, internships or field work, draw examples from these experiences. These may include ‘devising a business plan’, ‘developing a site survey’ or ‘conducting and analysing client evaluations’. Remember to also include skills developed via research, projects and assignments undertaken during your studies. Your work and extracurricular activities can also offer practical examples of employability skills such as training staff, event organisation, team sports and customer service skills. 2. For each activity, list the responsibilities you had, the skills you used and qualities you demonstrated. Be specific and avoid vague or general claims to skills. 3. Use this information to compile a list of the employability skills you have developed that are relevant to your field of expertise. Examples of employability skillsSkills sought by graduate employers include teamwork, communication, planning and organising, problem solving, and so forth. Some skills overlap with one another. Leadership, for example, encompasses a number of other skills including decision making, verbal communication, planning, organising, and collaboration. Personal attributes that contribute to overall employability include commitment, adaptability, honesty and integrity, reliability, ability to deal with pressure, motivation, and cultural fit with the employing organisation.
© Veer Objectives should align across the organization. You're probably familiar with the phrase "what gets measured gets done." Defining and measuring effectiveness – especially the performance of workers – is a critical part of your job as a manager. The question is: how do you define the skills, behaviors, and attitudes that workers need to perform their roles effectively? How do you know they're qualified for the job? In other words, how do you know what to measure? Some people think formal education is a reliable measure. Others believe more in on-the-job training, and years of experience. Others might argue that personal characteristics hold the key to effective work behavior. All of these are important, but none seems sufficient to describe an ideal set of behaviors and traits needed for any particular role. Nor do they guarantee that individuals will perform to the standards and levels required by the organization. A more complete way of approaching this is to link individual performance to the goals of the business. To do this, many companies use "competencies." These are the integrated knowledge, skills, judgment, and attributes that people need to perform a job effectively. By having a defined set of competencies for each role in your business, it shows workers the kind of behaviors the organization values, and which it requires to help achieve its objectives. Not only can your team members work more effectively and achieve their potential, but there are many business benefits to be had from linking personal performance with corporate goals and values. Defining which competencies are necessary for success in your organization can help you do the following:
How can you define the set of practices needed for effective performance? You can do this by adding a competency framework to your talent management program. By collecting and combining competency information, you can create a standardized approach to performance that's clear and accessible to everyone in the company. The framework outlines specifically what people need to do to be effective in their roles, and it clearly establishes how their roles relate to organizational goals and success. This article outlines the steps you need to take to develop a competency framework in your organization. Design Principles of a Competency FrameworkA competency framework defines the knowledge, skills, and attributes needed for people within an organization. Each individual role will have its own set of competencies needed to perform the job effectively. To develop this framework, you need to have an in-depth understanding of the roles within your business. To do this, you can take a few different approaches:
Developing a competency framework can take considerable effort. To make sure the framework is actually used as needed, it's important to make it relevant to the people who'll be using it – and so they can take ownership of it. The following three principles are critical when designing a competency framework:
Developing the FrameworkThere are four main steps in the competency framework development process. Each step has key actions that will encourage people to accept and use the final product. Step One: Prepare
Step Two: Collect InformationThis is the main part of the framework. Generally, the better the data you collect, the more accurate your framework will be. For this reason, it's a good idea to consider which techniques you'll use to collect information about the roles, and the work involved in each one. You may want to use the following:
Step Three: Build the FrameworkThis stage involves grouping all of the behaviors and skill sets into competencies. Follow these steps to help you with this task:
Step Four: ImplementAs you roll out the finalized competency framework, remember the principle of communication that we mentioned earlier. To help get buy-in from members of staff at all levels of the organization, it's important to explain to them why the framework was developed, and how you'd like it to be used. Discuss how it will be updated, and which procedures you've put in place to accommodate changes. Here are some tips for implementing the framework:
Creating a competency framework is an effective method to assess, maintain, and monitor the knowledge, skills, and attributes of people in your organization. The framework allows you to measure current competency levels to make sure your staff members have the expertise needed to add value to the business. It also helps managers make informed decisions about talent recruitment, retention, and succession strategies. And, by identifying the specific behaviors and skills needed for each role, it enables you to budget and plan for the training and development your company really needs. The process of creating a competency framework is long and complex. To ensure a successful outcome, involve people actually carrying out the roles to evaluate real jobs, and describe real behaviors. The increased level of understanding and linkage between individual roles and organizational performance makes the effort well worth it.
This site teaches you the skills you need for a happy and successful career; and this is just one of many tools and resources that you'll find here at Mind Tools. Subscribe to our free newsletter, or join the Mind Tools Club and really supercharge your career! |