Employability Skills

1
Employability Skills

• Workshop 2
• Career Services
• University of Canberra
• www.canberra.edu.au

2
UC Graduate Attributes

• Communication Skills
• Information Literacy and Numeracy
• Information Technology Skills
• Problem-Solving Skills
• Working with Others
• Workplace Skills
• Professional Ethics
• Social Responsibility
• Lifelong Learning
• Personal Attributes

3
Careers Website

• Employability Skills presentation
• and
• UC Graduate Attributes
• www.canberra.edu.au/careers/
• workshops2009

4
Employers

• Hire people (generally) on the basis of their
  skills what they can do.
• Your degree alone (generally) does not entitle
  you to a job.
• You must convince an employer that you have
  skills as well as knowledge.

5
Employment Partnership

• Two parties
• The employer he wants certain skills for a
  particular job
• The employee you have certain skills to offer
  along with your knowledge.
• Do your skills meet the employers needs?

6
Youve got your degree

• Once an employer knows you have
• the degree (knowledge) that is useful
• to him, he/she will want to know what
• your workplace and personal skills are.

7
What skills do employers want?

• In descending order
• Communication skills
• (Writing and speaking clearly, listening well,
  able to negotiate. Can you give and receive
  feedback?)
• Team work skills
• (Can you get on well with your colleagues in a
  group? Are you willing to help others?)

8
Skills contd

• Problem-solving skills
• (Can you face problems calmly? Can you identify
  problems as they arise? Can you find ways to
  solve them?)
• Initiative and enterprise skills
• (Can you deal with change and new situations?
  Can you put your ideas into action?)
• Planning and organising skills
• (Good at meeting deadlines? Able to see the
  implications of your actions? Can you work well
  under a bit of pressure?)

9
Skills contd

• Learning skills
• (Willing to learn new procedures? Willing to go
  on short courses? Prepared to do some graduate
  study? )
• Self-management skills
• (Do you have career goals? Can you assess your
  own job performance? Are you responsible for your
  own conduct?)
• Technology skills
• (A good knowledge of basic IT? Willing to learn
  more? Can you use IT safely?)

10
Graduate Recruitment

• In the behavioural questions you must
• answer in Graduate Recruitment
• applications, you will be writing about
• your employability skills.

11
Example

• Describe a situation where you had to make a
  presentation to a group. How did you prepare for
  this?
• Give an example of a time when you had to solve a
  problem on your own. What did you do? What was
  the outcome?
• Have you had to make a difficult decision in the
  last few years? What process did you go through
  to come to a decision?

12
Example

• Tell us about a time when you had to juggle
  competing deadlines. How did you organise your
  time?
• What other activities are you involved in outside
  your study? What do you gain from these
  activities?
• Describe a time when you had to deal with a new,
  unexpected situation. How did you deal with this?

13
STAR Technique

• Situation describe the situation you were in,
  the context
• Task what exactly was the problem to be solved?
• Action what did you think, what did you do and
  why?
• Result what happened? Were you successful? What
  did you learn from this?