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How employable are you?What is employability?Employability is essentially the combination of skills, qualifications, knowledge, experience, contacts and personal characteristics that make you attractive enough to organisations for them to want to hire and pay you! It's the 'career catnip' that everyone strives to achieve, not just as a graduate but throughout their lifetime. *Simply having a good degree isn't enough. What constitutes employability at any given time, or in any given circumstance, is constantly changing. Before the advent of computing technology, being able to write code, build a website or use Microsoft Word wouldn't have appeared on anyone's list of desirable skills. Today, computer literacy is a given for almost all jobs - particularly if you're a graduate. Who knows what tomorrow's hot skill will be? That's what can make staying on top of your employability so tricky and why you need to take every opportunity for personal development you can get your hands on! That said, there are some key areas that will come up time and time again during the selection process. Make sure that you have a plan to demonstrate that you meet or exceed these requirements if you want a shot at the best opportunities. Being under-employed, i.e. doing a boring, dead-end job as a grad is almost worse than being unemployed (except there is at least some cash involved!), so here's your starter for ten. Team-working: almost all jobs require the ability to work constructively with others and most graduates aspire to management or leadership positions sooner or later in their career. Having the aptitude to get things done with and through others comes high on the 'employability checklist' for most graduate recruiters. Hiring managers usually want people they can rely on to create a positive team ethos, not high maintenance, lazy, maverick divas. You will definitely be asked to provide examples of how you've already demonstrated that you can work in, or lead, a team - assessment centres usually have a group exercise element to put that to the test. Have you taken part in team sports? Have you been involved in a team challenge for a charity or volunteering project? Have you worked well with a lab partner or a project partner throughout your degree? Would your friends and colleagues say that you're good at contributing to discussions, able to handle responsibility, respectful and considerate of others, able to negotiate with or influence others? Or, would they say that you're disruptive, selfish, lazy, feckless, a poor contributor to household chores or the cooking rota? A taker but rarely a giver? Make sure that you can reference as many examples of team working as possible because using the same one several times on one application form will not impress selectors. Communication skills: good team work usually means being effective at communication too. Being able to produce clear, structured written work such as reports and presentations (the meat and drink of organisational life) should be something that has been tested and achieved during your undergraduate years. However, many employers complain that candidates cannot spell, have a poor command of grammar and are unable to express themselves in writing or orally. Part of the 'weapons of mass rejection' strategy of many big employers is to introduce verbal reasoning and literacy tests early in the selection process - if you can't communicate your suitability for the job in question, they won't be confident that you can communicate to a high enough standard with clients and colleagues. Not everyone can speak completely confidently and calmly at interviews. Recruiters expect a little nervousness at interviews, however, they will need to decide if you are temporarily tongue tied or simply unable to express yourself in any situation. Problem solving: Organisations are constantly faced with challenges: Where is the best place to source or spend their money? Which customers, products or services will be most profitable? How will new legislation, supplies of resources, climate change, competitors or Governments affect their ability to survive and prosper? Recruiters need to identify those candidates who can help their organisations solve their problems, not create or ignore them. How will you show them that you have experience of problem solving and have demonstrated an ability to think creatively? Are you motivated to find effective solutions? Can you think logically and strategically? Do you see the big picture and ask the right questions? Your degree subject may give you an edge here if you have studied science, maths (or perhaps you've won a prestigious prize), but everyone must be prepared to provide examples that will set them apart from the crowd. Numeracy: Some roles require much greater levels of numeracy than others, however, a certain level of competence is essential for pretty much all true graduate-level roles today. Careers in accounting, market and scientific research, asset and investment management, engineering and so forth all require above average qualifications because the ability to manipulate and interpret numbers is the essence of such roles. However, most managerial or professional roles will also require the ability to manage or set a budget, interpret sales figures or the key performance indicator reports that affect a particular functional role - customer traffic on a website, employee turnover statistics, conversions of sales calls to orders and so on. Numeracy tests are used early in the application processes for most big company roles today and can cause less confident candidates a great deal of anxiety. Many of the tests are far more complex and challenging than is strictly necessary and even experienced hires will sometimes be asked to take quite tough tests. Be that as it may, you need to be prepared - take as many practice tests as possible beforehand. IT literacy: It hardly needs to be said that being able to use some kind of word processing or spreadsheet programme and the internet is a given these days. However, if you have expert knowledge of particular programming languages or techniques, specialist software packages and skills in forms of media that are important to the role that you applying for, make sure that these are clearly outlined in your application. Self-management: Management structures in most organisations are pretty lean these days - employers are looking for people who can manage their time and priorities effectively, who can take as well as give direction and feedback and who don't need micro-managing. Being late for your interview, admitting that you hardly ever turned up for lectures or handed in coursework on time, or not being able to manage an assessment centre exercise designed to test your organisational skills, will all serve to undermine your perceived ability to manage yourself. When employers are handing out salaries, they expect to get an effective return on that investment so remember to make a good impression right from the beginning of the selection process. Besides, you'll probably have to work quite long hours - being badly organised at work and taking longer than necessary to complete a task means less time for you to socialise and actually have a life as well! Commercial awareness: Employers want to know that you are genuinely interested in their sector, the challenges it faces and the culture and customer ethos they need to adopt to achieve their objectives. If, for example, you are applying to work in management consultancy, they will expect that you understand current affairs, that you've bothered to read the customer publications on their website and done some background research. If you want to go into the Civil Service, interviewers may quite rightfully expect you to have an appreciation of who the leading figures in the Government of the day are, what the impact of the budget deficit is on public services and current affairs. Make some time to keep up with the outside world not just what is going on on Facebook or YouTube. Additional skills: Can you speak another language? Can you drive? Do you have any other skill, experience, achievement or contacts that will give you the edge when recruiters are sifting through hundreds of CVs? Use them wisely, every little detail could mean the difference between you being at the top or the bottom of the recruiter's list. Work experience: If you haven't so much as served a pint in a bar or had some basic experience of work, you are at a serious disadvantage in the selection process. If you've had an internship or a work experience placement, you'll have serious advantage. Internships and part-time jobs aren't always easy to come by, but get some experience you must. You'll find more helpful resources on the site here. *Your degree: Where you went to university, what you studied and your grade obviously does have an impact on your employability. If you're graduating now, the choices you made three or four years ago have already had an impact on your future. (If you're about to go then you'll find some useful advice in the Sixth Form Zone about choosing the best uni and course). Grade: A minimum of a 2:1 is what most of the big employers want (around 67% insist on it) - it's a buyer's market and it's a standard way of cutting down the numbers for their initial selection process. It's not all over if you got lower than a 2:1 but you'll need to try harder, beef up on your other attributes and be more creative about where you apply - lots of smaller or less well known companies may be only too glad to hire you. Your university: The university you went to makes a big difference - some employers only target Oxbridge, The Russell Group or universities where they have established relationships, currently offer work experience or internships, or that specialise in particular topics. Apparently some Russell Group universities were more than 10 times more likely to be visited by leading recruiters than even the most popular post-1992 universities. Your degree subject: Only 26% of the big graduate employers specify a degree subject. Some qualifications are more likely to lead to employment than others such as Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Science and it is impossible to practice in those fields without the requisite qualifications. Destination studies carried out by the universities show that computer science, mass communications and creative arts graduates have the highest levels of unemployment. Post graduate qualifications in Law and Journalism are popular options for arts graduates in order to enhance their employability in those sectors. Apparently, more physics graduates end up working in the financial services industry than in the scientific or engineering sector. So, your grade and where you studied appear to have a much greater impact on your overall employability than your degree subject. Your disposition: On top of everything else, employers like enthusiastic, motivated, driven, dedicated applicants that know how to show initiative and may be capable of becoming the future leaders and wealth creators in their organisations. It's the 'X Factor' that makes one candidate a winner and another an also-ran. They want to like you and they spend a lot of effort in their employer brand and values work to make sure you'll like them. That's the personal part for which there is no test, no exam, no guarantee. Still, it's not all one way. Learn to smile at interviews but also trust your instincts - if you don't like anyone you meet during the interview process and you don't get a good vibe about the place, be very careful before you agree to work there! Students with disabilities: There is so much help, if you know where to find it, for students with disabilities to improve their employability prospects. If you have difficulties with anything from mobility to dyslexia, you'll find useful resources on our new page help for students with disabilities. Useful resources Practice tests - Assessment Day - a mixture of both free and inexpensive tests for verbal reasoning, numeracy and inductive reasoning. PwC employability website resources - interesting mix of video, quizzes and information to explain how the UK's biggest recruiter of graduates looks for evidence of employability. Follow us on Twitter @mycareersadvice, join our Facebook Fan Page and our LinkedIn Group, link to us - spread the word about mygraduatecareer.com! |
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