Skills / Qualities & proving them on applications.

Hi emorgan1 - we have a whole advice section on employability skills https://successatschool.org/advice/employability-skills that your students may find useful to read. When it comes to recognising your skills, we have a Skills log in our students career profile section. They can go in and record different types of employability skills and we give examples of each one. Just get them to register and select the Skills tab of their profile. If they start completing this, they will find it easier to demonstrate these skills on their application forms.

Thanks Mitesh - I do spend a lot of time talking to students about this. One of the main problems that I face is that students struggle to see what the relevant skills / qualities are for the role and to be able to develop these over a 3 / 5 / 7 year plan as they are often not mentioned in talks / career websites. This is why I have asked is there specific skills (for example) accountancy want students to have and what are the best ways for a student to show this ([link removed] are there specific industry competitions that are run.)

In my experience, students need to show skills that are above and beyond qualifications, for example in teamwork or communications.
My two kids teach karate, and they fail to see why this is good to mention in a college application, but teaching small children karate and the disciplines ticks so many boxes!
So it is about the students thinking about what they do outside school, are they a member of a sports team, do they generate ideas for a club, do they participate in a club or competition that demonstrates how well he/she works with others?

Hi Emorgan1 - we have a number of accountancy firms on the forum, so hopefully you'll hear from them.

Hi Feest - yes we find that a number of students have developed skills, they just don't know it. So it's important for them to associate skills to activities and that's why we encourage them to create a record.

Hello! The skills we look for include communication skills, teamworking, the ability to manage a task/project, commercial awareness & leadership. You can find details here: https://www.pwc.co.uk/careers/student-jobs/apply/the-skills-we-look-for.html
Whilst relevant work experience & study is useful, it's not necessary as employers will provide specific technical training. We'd encourage students to get involved in extra curricular activities e.g. volunteering, sports, clubs, part time jobs etc to develop transferable skills. Competition wise, PwC runs the National Schools Employability Challenge & for an accountancy based competition, schools can enter students into the ICAEW's BASE competion.
http://www.nsechallenge.co.uk/
http://careers.icaew.com/en/campaigns/base-competition
PwC also run skills sessions & open days involving group projects, business games & practice assessments. We also have a toolkit on our website where teachers can download the sessions to run themselves.