Enhancing your chances

A host of local and national surveys have questioned employers about what they want from their graduate recruits. The consensus is that employers want intelligent and enthusiastic individuals who can organise and plan their work and interact with others effectively. Some of these skills will be developed by your academic study, others will need to be developed outside your studies. Your applications will be more convincing if you can point to a range of situations in which you developed the skills the employers seek and make yourself more employable.

• What Skills Do Employers Want?
• So How Can You Get These Skills?
• Further Reading

The Employer Satisfaction survey conducted by the University of Central England asked recruiters to rank 60 skills in order of importance. The top 12 listed as most important were:

• Willingness to learn
• Commitment
• Dependability/reliability
• Self-motivation
• Team work
• Communication skills (oral)
• Co-operation
• Communication skills (written)
• Drive/energy
• Self-management
• Desire to achieve/motivation
• Problem-solving ability

According to research carried out by the Association of Graduate Recruiters, a complete graduate requires similar skills:

• Self-awareness. Able clearly to identify your skills, values, interests and core strengths and able to provide evidence of abilities. Actively willing to seek feedback from others. Able to identify areas for personal, academic and professional development.
• Self-promotion. Able to define and promote own agenda. Can identify 'customer needs' (academic/community/employer) and can promote own strengths in a convincing way.
• Exploring opportunities. Able to identify, create, investigate and seize opportunities. Has research skills to identify possible sources of information, help and support.
• Action planning. Able to plan an effective course of action. Able to implement an action plan, organise time effectively and prepare contingency plans. Able to monitor and evaluate progress against specific objectives.
• Networking. Aware of the need to develop networks of contacts. Able to define, develop, and maintain a support network for advice and information.
• Matching and decision-making. Understands personal priorities and constraints (internal and external), which includes the need for a sustainable balance of work and home life. Able to match opportunities to core skills, knowledge, values, interests etc. Able to make an informed decision based on the available opportunities.
• Negotiation. Able to negotiate from a position of powerlessness. Able to reach 'win/win' agreements.
• Political awareness. Understands the hidden tensions and power struggles within organisations. Aware of the location of power and influence within organisations.
• Coping with uncertainty. Able to adapt goals in the light of changing circumstances. Able to take a myriad of tiny risks.
• Development focus. Committed to lifelong learning. Understands preferred method and style of learning. Reflects on learning from experiences, good and bad. Able to learn from the mistakes of others.
• Transfer skills. Able to apply skills to new contexts - a higher level skill in itself.
• Self-confidence. Has an underlying confidence in abilities, based on past successes. Also has a personal sense of self-worth, not dependent on performance.

Prior to University

It is important to develop the skills mentioned above not just to get into work, but also to get into university. There are many courses where evidence of these skills is required (eg medicine and law). One way to develop them and show evidence of commitment and motivation is through work experience. Look carefully at prospectuses and Entry Profiles on the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) website to find out what they are looking for.

Schools and colleges have organised work experience weeks, but don't wait for someone else to sort it out for you. Think about being proactive. Contact relevant businesses using yellow pages, be clear what you want and when. Be inventive: it might be difficult to get work experience in a hospital, for example, because of issues of confidentiality, but working as a porter would give you a great insight into the way the whole organisation operates and will bring you into contact with patients. Don't feel your work experience has to be all-singing and all-dancing - a few days here and there will suffice and breadth of experience is often more important than spending two weeks with the same organisation.

Do look at opportunities for skills development in your own backyard: in your own school or college. Many will have student councils that are elected, but be prepared to start something new whether it's redecorating the sixth form block or running a fund-raising activity. There are many opportunities to help with open evenings and get involved in sixth form conferences on a range of issues. A very good example is the Model United Nations conferences. Here you will be assigned a country and will have to research issues and debate in role for a weekend. If you want a real challenge, there is an international version at The Hague. There are many taster courses run by professional bodies and by universities. Be prepared to help teachers of younger children. You may not necessarily want to go into teaching, but it will show evidence of commitment, communication, people skills and initiative.

Look for volunteering opportunities outside school and college too, during the evenings, weekends and the summer holidays. Your local authority may well have a database of voluntary activities. A good organisation to check is Volunteering England. A database of volunteering opportunities in your local area can be found at YouthNet and international volunteering activities can be found at WorldWide Volunteering (WWV).

Finally, do not ignore the skills you have developed in your part-time work. Communication, teamwork, drive and energy are all essential in many jobs, whether they be fairly mundane or not, and they are skills highly prized by employers. It is also a good idea to keep a log of all your different activities, paid or voluntary, in and out of school. It will make writing your UCAS personal statement much easier and provide a good foundation for your CV.

At University

People go to university for a variety of reasons - to increase their knowledge and understanding, to gain new competencies and to develop as a person. To acquire the raft of personal skills which employers value, make the most of the opportunities which your time at university may offer:

• Attend courses, run through your university's student association or careers service, to help you practise and develop skills such as negotiating, making presentations and team working.
• Get involved in extracurricular activities. Some positions of responsibility may develop team-working, leadership and organisational skills. Not everyone, of course, wants to be an 'office-bearer' but remember that any level of involvement demonstrates desirable qualities: commitment, reliability, persistence; so don't underestimate yourself.
• As part of your course, you may elect to spend some time abroad. Afterwards, students often reflect on how the experience has encouraged, amongst other things, their self-management and self-reliance skills.
• Consider the benefits of any work experience you undertake during your time at university, whether through a course-related placement, an internship or more general vacation employment. As well as learning specific technical skills through each job, you may also develop other qualities such as reliability, willingness to learn and flexibility - all attractive to future employers. Careers services, student employment services and organisations like AIESEC and the Student Industrial Society will keep you informed of suitable opportunities.
• Employers also understand the value of voluntary work, recognising that volunteers often have a high level of motivation, a sense of responsibility and the desire to make a difference. Investigate voluntary schemes and organisations connected to your university and get involved. Occasionally, training is offered to volunteers - another good chance to increase your skills.
• Finally, of course, academic studies will sharpen your skills. The abilities to communicate, both in writing and orally, problem-solve, work to deadlines and manage your time effectively are just some of the skills students naturally develop and improve as they pursue their courses. These techniques and processes often interest employers as much as the knowledge and information you have absorbed.

Employer Satisfaction: Summary, Lee Harvey and Diana Green, Quality in Higher Education Project, University of Central England, 1994.

Skills for Graduates in the 21st Century, Association of Graduate Recruiters, 1995, p19.

not found (id=43823) , Centre for Research into Quality, University of Central England, 1996.