Enhancing Employability: E4S video series

Join E4S' Khai Trung Le as he discusses your employability, its importance in helping you gain work and what you can do to enhance it. Find out what employers look for in an employee and what you can do to improve your chances of standing out when applying for student jobs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg8egR6lB_M Watch this episode and more in the "A-Z student job hunting" series here.

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, I’m Khai and thank you for joining us for the fourth episode of our video series on student job hunting. Here at Employment4students, we have years of experience helping more than 18 million school, college and university students find part-time work, holiday jobs, internships and year-out opportunities and graduate jobs. Over the course of the series, we’ve talked about numerous elements of the process of job hunting: the ideal CV, filling in application forms, interview techniques. This week, we’re going to be covering something a little more ambiguous: enhancing your employability. A term you’ve all heard before, but maybe you weren’t too sure what it actually meant. Today, we’re going to address what your employability actually is, why it’s important, how it can help you find work and how you can improve it, as well as offer a range of alternative job hunting methods where enhancing employability can make the difference.

DEFINING EMPLOYABILITY

Put simply, employability is the term given to the personal skills and attributes you have that will appeal to employers and put you in consideration for a position. Generally considered separate from your qualifications and education, these tend to come under the classification of “soft skills”, a term we’ve mentioned a few times in previous videos. The skills and attributes that come under employability can vary - there’s no definitive directory. However the Higher Education Academy has published this handy list identifying some of the key qualities that employers say they value: Cognitive skills, to being able to identify, analyse and apply information. These skills help assess risk, problem-solving and your ability to reach accurate conclusions with information to hand. Generic competencies, such as communication and persuasive skills and the ability to work among a team. Being able to contribute to discussions and negotiations. Key language, numeracy and base IT skills also come under this category. Practical and professional skills, possessing critical analysis and evaluation of professional practise, conduct, and an appreciation of business culture, policies and processes. Technical information skills also comes under this category as being skilled in relevant and up-to-date IT is ever important. Finally, personal capabilities, how able you are to learn and improve your performance and self-awareness. This is sometimes called emotional intelligence, also governing how susceptible you are to stress and indecision. Employability is remarkably straightforward. As successful students, you should already possess many of these skills and likely employ them without active consideration. Not often you’ll turn on a MacBook and think “I am utilising my practical technical information skills.” But being able to accurately and succinctly impart your capabilities to prospective employers can make the difference.

ENHANCING EMPLOYABILITY

Now we’ve identified some of the attributes that employers are actively searching for, what can you do to improve them and bring them to employers’ attention? Firstly, take up hobbies, interests and courses outside of your social habits and comfort zones. University is a great time to explore different opportunities like learning another language, mixing with people from different countries, cultures and social backgrounds. This can develop your cultural awareness and confidence, and second languages are always an attractive proposition to employers, especially those with overseas divisions, departments or activities. Secondly, get involved with your student union, clubs and societies. You’ll find plenty of like-minded individuals who share similar interests and many societies - and certainly your union - will have positions of responsibility that might help highlight your ambition, enthusiasm and responsibility. Spending two years as union treasurer is a surefire way of imparting your finance handling skills. On a similar note, consider taking part-time work or voluntary positions during your studies. Your studies are a priority and you’ll need to balance work around it. But you’ll develop interpersonal skills, time management and an awareness of how business and companies operate. Having an active work background will also help distinguish yourself from other graduates in the application stage. The same applies for internships and work experience. Finally, you can use online platforms to demonstrate your skills. Many creative industries including journalism and graphic design look highly on applicants that already have an up-to-date and accessible portfolio or participation on projects, articles and existing work. Blogging platforms like Tumblr and Wordpress are popular and easy to use, and easily shared with prospective employers. Conversely, on the subject of your internet presence, it might be worth protecting your online identity, either by enhancing your privacy settings or tidying anything that might put across an unslightly message. It is not uncommon for employers to look at Facebook and other social media pages at the application stage and if your Facebook is full of pro-KKK propaganda, you might struggle to find work.

WHY EMPLOYABILITY IS IMPORTANT

We’ve spoken on what employability is and how you can enhance it. Much of it is straightforward and some of you might be assuming that you don’t need to work on these skills. However the Every Student Counts NTFS Project collected a range of anonymous comments from graduate employers ranging from banking and financial institutions to national government denoting their frustration at perceived failings in applicants, all of which related to failings in core skills covered under the category of employability. Firstly, “many graduates are rejected without interview because of poor maths skills”. Numeracy skills are often ignored by students entering courses where the application of maths is a rarity - how much times is algebra employed on a sociology course? - however it is important to note that many jobs require you to have a strong handling of basis maths, and keeping up to date on your ability to multiply seven by eight is more necessary than you might think. Another financial group also commented: “We find that even though our tests are pre-GCSE standard, around half of candidates fail.” A source from national government remarked that candidates were “stronger on the use of software than the underlying principles.” Tying in to how skills associated with employability are often utilised without forethought, understanding the process of why is just as important as how, and being explain to articulate that will distinguish yourself from other candidates at application and interview stage. A consulting firm stated that a number of applicants struggled with certain basic principles, noting “not all [applicants] understand scientific notation. Not all understand how to convert between different units of measurement.” Again, these skills can be important to a range of entry-level jobs including lab technician and service engineer and you should ensure that your relevant skills are up-to-date before applying or entering interview. Finally the armed forces officer training scheme can be a very attractive choice for students. However one spokesperson commented: “Despite requiring maths GCSE, min grade C, for all our officer candidates (majority are graduates) we have introduced a psychometric test to ensure they have the right standard for numeracy and literacy.” A little disheartening, but hopefully this has instilled the importance of your employability in addition to your education, and how an assortment of elements both large and small can easily put employers off. Fortunately these are all concerns very easily rectified and passing these early hurdles will help make you stand out to employers.

EXAMPLE - EDITOR FOR STUDENT NEWSPAPER

To close up, we wanted to give you a very obvious, very direct example in how extracurricular activities can help improve your employability and what kind of skills you’ll develop in an example position. So, let’s say you join the uni newspaper as a journalist or reporter. What do you get out of this? Firstly, it’s a great way to get your name in print and the first steps to building an active portfolio. You’ll also have to learn time management skills as you manage your uni work load and your newspaper responsibilities, as well as exercising the key skills required in journalism such as an acute attention to detail and communicative skills. After a while, you might become a section editor, say film or sport. You’ll develop team-management and organisational skills as you juggle the needs of your managers and those of eager freshers keen to pick up their first byline under your watch. You’ll liaise with the editor regarding what kind of coverage to pursue as well as external PR companies, enhancing your understanding of the industry and business conduct. Eventually, you might progress to a production role such as sub editor or hopefully editor-in-chief. At this point it’s unlikely that you’ll spend much time writing but you’ll be managing the different departments, liaising with other companies responsible for the production of the magazine, budgets and other major decisions involving the publication. As stated, this is all very straightforward but this is the kind of experience that makes candidates stand out when applying for jobs where the size and quality of competition is a very real consideration, and you’ll need every edge you can muster.

CONCLUSION

That’s it for today. Join us for our final episode where we’ll have a Q&A session, answering questions submitted by our viewers. You still have time to send us your questions either below in the comments or via Twitter at @e4scouk, on our Facebook page facebook.com/employment4students. In the meanwhile, check out our website at www.e4s.co.uk for loads of additional job hunting tips and a great selection of student jobs. Thanks for watching, and we look forward to seeing you next week for our final episode.