Overview

This is what this employability skills development package is all about. You may wonder why do we need employability skills? To answer this question it is useful to look at a definition of employability skills:

"A set of skills, knowledge and personal attributes that make an individual more likely to secure and be successful in their chosen occupation(s) to the benefit of themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy."

So developing employability skills enables you to manage the direction of your career taking account of many factors such as competition for jobs, family responsibilities and job availability. It is also about being able to take control of unexpected events too, such as the expansion of students entering University, changes in the Chinese economy, and the rapid developments in technology which can all affect graduate careers. So we can also say that developing effective employability skills:

...allows (you) the self reliant graduate to be aware of the changing world of work, and take responsibility for his or her own career and personal development

(Association of Graduate Recruiters 1995 ‘Skills for the 21st Century’).

To become a self-reliant graduate you need to:

• • Understand your strengths and weaknesses
• • Be aware of what you are looking for in a career
• • Understand the opportunities available to you and how to research them
• • Match what you can offer to the opportunities available to make a good decision
• • Develop an effective strategy to find employment or training

What is in this session?

• PowerPoint presentation – What are employability skills? - Powerpoint
• Lifepath exercise - Exercise
• Defining employability skills - Exercise
• Modelling employability skills - Exercise

What you will learn?

• • To understand some of the main careers theories regarding how people make career decisions
• • To understand what is meant by the word 'employability'
• • To relate these to your own experiences
• • To reflect on your own career lifepath to date
• • To understand and define what employability skills are
• • To see how these relate to what employers want