This brings us to the core of your preparation phase: YOUR SKILLS. A lot of conventions change over time when it comes to recruitment and employability but as Ian Powell, Chairman and Senior Partner of PWC UK LLP expressed: “The DNA of the business is still the same – the best people with the right blend of skills drive us to be number one.”
And adding emphasis to this, Charles Macleod, Talent Leader at PWC UK LLP said quite rightly: “Academic study gets your foot in the door, employability skills push it open to a far wider range of opportunities.”
So what are employability skills? And what are other essential skills?
In simple terms, employability skills are skills required for success in the labour market at all employment levels and for all sectors. Essentially, in addition to your formal training and educational background, this is exactly what employers are looking for.
While some of these skills might be rather generic, others really differentiate you from the crowd and that’s why it is so important to really define and extract your personal skills set that makes you stand out from the crowd.
There are many employability skills lists but a common reference is the Core Skills for Work Developmental Framework (CSfW) which has identified 4 key areas that Australian employers and industries regard as important in order to gain and maintain employment:
- Non-technical skills (generic or employability skills)
- Technical or discipline-specific skills
- Core language, literacy and numeracy (LLN) skills
- Context of skills application.
These skill areas encompass 10 skills which are further grouped under three skill clusters:
This is to show you how skills can influence your performance, how they are interlinked and which areas you might have to develop further still. Let’s have a look at specific examples. For the purpose of this guide, we will only focus on technical skills, and non-technical skills.
a) Technical or discipline-specific skills
This skills set is often referred to as ‘hard skills’ and is usually gained through more formal education and/or training. Since these skills are learnt and can therefore be proven and actively demonstrated, they are more easily measurable for potential employers. In a nutshell, these skills describe a person’s ability to do a specific task.
Some of the most sought-after hard skills include:
- Administration
- Coaching
- Communication & interpersonal skills
- Customer service & acquisition
- IT
- Language skills
- Marketing skills including presentation techniques
- Software skills & development such as MS Office, Photoshop, content management systems & SEO tools
- Patent law expertise
- Research
- Server operation
- Tax accounting
- Text creation skills & editing
- Translation
- Typing speed & techniques, and many more. For more detailed information, click here.
In addition to the above skills, LinkedIn revealed a list of the most-in-demand hard skills in 2020. Watch out for these:
- Change management
- Corporate management
- Data analysis and data interpretation
- Digital expertise
- Knowledge management
- Programming skills
- Project management
- Social media knowledge
Your personal hard skills set enables you to get through the very first step of the application process as the company uses it as a means of assessment for job profile fit and even specialization.
An applicant with knowledge of several programming languages, for example, could be considered for a role as a programmer. Speaking various languages could imply good communication skills and possibly some translation skills.
How can you communicate your hard skills toolbox?
The first step would be to list your hard skills in order of relevance to the job advertisement in question. You will then decide which of these you want to highlight in your cover letter, and which ones to mention in your resume. In the resume, these skills would often appear under the ‘education’ and ‘training’ section in order to establish a link between your career and hard skills.
Other skills not falling into these categories could be listed at the end of your resume under a separate section entitled ‘skills’. The cover letter, on the other hand, would then include your most important skills that are mentioned as the main requirements of the job advertisement.
b) Non-technical skills
Let’s have a look now at the other end of the spectrum: your ‘soft skills’, often referred to as employability skills.
In an interview, potential employers usually ask you a number of questions related to your character or personality. The skills that are being sought after here are so-called non-technical or soft skills. These skills are generally not certified and/or measurable, and relate more to qualities or your character traits, which is why it is difficult to verify these types of skills. They assess the way a person deals with tasks and how they function in a work environment. Choosing your non-technical skills wisely is an important part of your preparation since these skills are usually transferable across industries and roles.
These skills set usually provides answers to the following three questions: How do you work as an independent individual? How do you function as part of a social setting? How do you manage challenges and complications? Based on these questions, soft skills can therefore be categorized into 3 main areas: personal skills, social skills and methodical skills.
Examples include the following non-exhaustive list:
For more details, click here.
Here again, LinkedIn revealed a list of the most-in-demand soft skills in 2020. Watch out for these:
- Creativity
- Persuasion
- Collaboration
- Adaptability
- Emotional intelligence
Your personal soft skills set enables you to stand out from the crowd in the final stages of the application process, mainly after all potential candidates have been interviewed. It is essential to choose your soft skills wisely as, to a certain extent, they can make up for a lack of hard skills.
For more information on soft skills rankings, go to this link.
How can you communicate your soft skills toolbox?
Soft skills are more difficult to communicate as they require a story to be explained. However, there are indeed various ways you can implicitly show your soft skills, mainly in your cover letter. You can show your creative side by choosing an original design. Having worked while studying or vice versa points to high stress-resilience and self-discipline. Volunteering or community work implies social competence and self-motivation.
In addition, you might want to include relevant hobbies and interests in your resume. Team sports, for example, demonstrate team spirit and seeking a healthy work-life balance while an interest in strategy games implies problem-solving skills.
As you can see, there is a lot to your skills set. Both categories of skills have to be well-chosen, well-defined and linked with each other since they make you the professional person you truly are. For more industry-insights, please consult the following PWC Report.
Whichever hard and soft skills you mention in your job application process, ensure that:
- your written communication (emails, reports, letters etc) is clear, concise, proofread and organized.
- your skills set distinguishes you and highlights that you possess skills that cannot be replicated by automation such as problem-solving, initiative, creativity and analytical skills.
- you include any extra-curricular activities such as volunteering, community work, club and society memberships etc, to show that you truly are a good, self-motivated and team-spirited individual
- you have a potential plan of action for skill areas in which you require further development.
Moreover, remember to always be prepared in an interview to tell a story about your skills and link them to a relevant past experience. This will enable you to provide evidence and make you more convincing. A good approach could be either the:
IDEAL model
I = Identify the problem.
D = Define and represent the problem.
E = Explore possible strategies.
A = Act on the strategies.
L = Look back and evaluate the effects of your activities.
or the
STAR model
S = Situation
T = Task
A = Action
R = Result
READYourself: Now, let’s tailor the employability framework to your career road map. The following tools will enable you to identify or define your goals, explore your strengths and weaknesses, and help you establish a plan of action.
READYourself: Skills Transfer
Find a job advertisement that is relevant to your chosen field/occupation and deconstruct it in order to identify the key employability skills, knowledge, experience and other requirements. Write all relevant requirements in the first column in the table below.
Then, in the second column, address each of the selection criteria by relating them to your past experience. This process is called skills transfer and enables you to identify requirements that you fulfill and others that you do not ‘formally’ satisfy. For the latter, try to identify past experience that involved similar skills and/or qualifications.
Skills Transfer Table
A final word on development. As job market demands are constantly evolving, so should your skills set. Try to seek out opportunities to build upon your skills through part-time work (Seek, Indeed), internships (Seek, Internships, Gradconnection), work-integrated learning, volunteering (Seek, Volunteering Australia, Go Volunteer), Community Work and Employability Skills Courses.
Wherever you are on your journey, whatever you will do from here on: KEEP YOURSELF READY!
Here are some stats to get you thinking more about guiding your skills development.
For more information and case studies, click here.
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