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What are key skills? Employability skills to help you get a job
With so many young people out there looking for jobs, how do you stand out from the crowd and impress employers? This is where key skills come in.
Key skills are employability skills that you need for the world of work – and they're pretty important for life as well! By developing employability skills, you’ll improve your chances of getting a job and thriving in your career.
But how do you gain these employability skills? Luckily, there are lots of different ways to develop them – including lessons or extracurricular activities at school, in a Saturday or holiday job, doing projects in your own time or work experience.
'School, Saturday job, club, society, work experience - just a few ways to gain key skills'
First, check out this video for a quick overview of key skills:
What are key skills?
You can read more about the specific employability skills further down the article.
Here is a list of key skills that employers typically look out for:
- Aiming high
- Creativity
- Leadership
- Listening
- Presenting and speaking
- Problem solving
- Staying positive
- Teamwork
How key skills or employability skills can boost your CV
Employers consider key skills to be the most important section of your CV. A solid set of employability skills sets you apart from other applicants and shows the boss what you will bring to the job.
But it’s important to bring this section to life rather than just writing a generic list of keys skills – you need to give specific examples. Don’t worry if you’ve never had a job before – employability skills are transferable from school, clubs and other areas of life.
For example, instead of just having a bullet point saying you have 'good listening skills', explain that you are a member of the debating team and have represented your school in public competitions.
Here are some of the top employability skills and ideas for how you can develop them (and then write about them on your CV).
Aiming high
Setting goals and coming up with a plan to reach them.
Employers look for people who understand what they are trying to achieve and the steps it will take to reach that goal. It’s not a skill you’ll develop overnight, but once you’ve mastered the ability to aim high, you’ll be able to work independently and with initiative under your own steam. Employers love this because they can trust you to get on with the job in hand with minimal supervision.
There are loads of great examples you could give from your school career to demonstrate this skill. For example, if you’ve ever worked on a piece of coursework – think history, design and technology or English – or even an art portfolio, you’ve had to aim high.
Producing coursework or an art portfolio involves setting yourself a question or topic or – in the case of art – picking a particular style and coming up with a vision, then planning out the steps you need to realise that. You can’t just launch in – you need to prepare, identify the stages of your projects (employers often call these milestones), check your progress along the way and sometimes rethink, then review your project at the end.
Creativity
Using your imagination to come up with new ideas and approaches.
Employers love people who can think outside the box – a skill which is essential in today’s competitive technology-driven world. The growth of start-ups and ‘start-up culture’ means employers are looking for people who can innovate, and the explosion of online tools means anyone can do anything – companies want people who do it differently!
You might be surprised to learn that creativity is closely linked to problem-solving. Being able to think differently gives you the tools to see solutions other people might miss. Not everyone is Leonardo da Vinci – you don’t have to be born a genius to develop creative thinking skills, you can learn them too!
Practical examples you could give in a job application include taking part in a school play or dance/music concert, an art of photography project, or a creative writing project you’ve done in your own time. Can you think of a time when you had to come up with a clever hack to get something done? Coming up with an unusual example is itself a demonstration of your creativity skills (as long as you haven’t made it up)!
Leadership
Supporting and encouraging others as you work towards a shared goal.
While it’s important that you can work well as a team (we’ll get to teamwork later), being able to show you’ve got what it takes to lead is an employability skill that will set you apart from many candidates. It doesn’t mean you have to be the next boss – employers value people who can inspire and encourage colleagues on a team project or help others get through the day-to-day challenges of working life.
While a whole load of examples may not exactly spring to mind, leadership is a key skill you can develop at school and through extra-curricular activities. If it’s a skill you maybe don’t have as much as some of the others on this page, why not look at our examples and see if there are ways you can boost your leadership skills?
Examples that show off your ability to lead include being captain of a sports team or leader of a club or group. If you have a Saturday job, do you ever train up new team-members of show colleagues how to do things they’re not sure about, for example, using new technology? And of course, your ability to get along with other people is key to leadership, so look for opportunities to do this – at school, work or in your personal relationships.
Listening
Taking in information, remembering it, and responding or acting on it in an appropriate way.
Employers like good listeners because listening well enables you to understand what colleagues, bosses and customers have said to you, making you more productive and less prone to mistakes. Listening well – which is an aspect of communication – means not interrupting and paying attention to what others say rather than disappearing into your own thoughts (this is sometimes called ‘active listening’). It also involves identifying where you haven’t understood something and asking clarifying questions.
Maybe you’re not the world’s best listener, but you certainly have to demonstrate some degree of listening in your school life. If you understand your teacher’s instructions and respond to questions in class, the chances are you’ve got listening skills.
Other examples you could turn to in a job application relate to your interpersonal relationships. Are you a supportive friend when people you know are going through a tough time? Do people tell you that you’re a great listening ear or that you give good advice? That’s listening skills in action.
Presenting or speaking
Getting your ideas across out loud – whether chatting one-to-one or presenting to an audience.
Being able to speak effectively is an indispensable workplace skill which just about any employer will ask for in a job description! It’s a part of communication and it enables you to interact with colleagues and bosses, and deal professionally with clients or customers too. It’s not just about being able to string together a sentence – speaking well means being able to pick an appropriate tone and style to suit the audience you’re dealing with.
In this sense, speaking is an aspect of presentation – the image you project of yourself in the workplace. Presentation also means the ability to communicate with confidence to groups, whether that be colleagues, managers or clients.
In school, speaking and presentation are skills you hone directly in subjects like drama and English. However, all subjects will involve group work from time to time, encouraging you to communicate technical, subject-specific ideas to others – a great way to practise your speaking. Plus, if you have a Saturday job, you’ve got direct experience of speaking in a workplace environment – great news for your CV and job applications!
Problem solving
Thinking of effective ways to overcome a challenge.
Problem solving is among the most valuable skills in any job. It’s particularly important in roles that deal with difficult or constantly changing situations – such as engineering, construction or jobs where you have to deal with, ugh, people! But whatever you do, you’ll face challenges and difficulties every day – and your boss will want to know that you’re not going to run away screaming at the first sign of trouble.
Luckily, problem solving isn’t just confined to the world of work, it’s something we do in our everyday lives – and that includes school! Every time you try to solve an equation in maths or tackle an essay question in English or history – that’s problem solving. You’re combining the knowledge you have with the techniques and tools you’ve learnt to overcome a hurdle and reach your goal.
At work, you will learn technical skills and know-how related to your profession. Without this, you wouldn’t get very far! What employers are looking for is a problem-solving mindset which allows you apply yourself to the challenges you’ll come across in your day-to-day work.
Staying positive
Being able to overcome obstacles to achieve goals.
Employers love candidates who can demonstrate they’ve got the grit and resilience to apply themselves to a challenge independently and without constant supervision. Think of it from your boss’s point of view – if you can find your own way through a challenge, they know you can get stuff done without them having to be there to hold your hand.
No doubt you’ve sat down to a maths question, English essay or even a group task and thought, ‘I’ve got no idea where to start!’ Did you give up? Or did you persevere? If you gritted your teeth and knuckled down, then you demonstrated the skill of staying positive.
Other examples could come from your personal life. Life is full of challenges and sometimes we have no choice but to get through them – it could be a personal relationship or family situation. All of these examples are valid and relevant, so long as you feel happy to talk about them.
Teamwork
Collaborating with others to get a task done together.
While employers look for people who can work well on their own, they also want to hire people who can get on with others and work together in a mutually supportive way. That means playing to each other’s strengths – figuring out who is good at what, dividing up the work and communicating well to achieve your shared goal. Teamwork is made up of good communication – both listening and speaking – people skills and a genuine respect for others and their abilities.
At school, teamwork comes into play in any subject which involves working together – and that includes most of the curriculum! PE teaches us to work collaboratively to win – without teamwork, it’s impossible to perform well in team sports. Subjects like drama and music might involve working together to stage a theatrical or musical performance.
But any scenario where you have to do group tasks – from maths to English – encourages teamwork, and any of these examples are fair game in your job application!
Now you've got employability skills covered, learn about soft skills, which are just as important to many employers.
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