Employability skills workshops

What are employability skills?

Discipline Specific Skills

These refer to your ability to do the job and are sometimes called 'hard skills'. They might include such things as:

technical ability
knowledge
qualifications.

The assumption is sometimes made that discipline specific skills are more important than employability skills. However, in a world where knowledge (discipline specific) rapidly becomes obsolete the ability to identify, access, network and communicate new information (employability) is vital for career success.

Employability Skills

The Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) and the Business Council of Australia (BCA) have developed the following list of employability skills sometimes referred to as 'soft skills':

Initiative

Adapting to new situations
Developing a strategic long-term vision
Being creative
Identifying opportunities not obvious to others
Translating ideas into action
Generating a range of options
Initiating innovative solutions.

Communication

Listening and understanding
Speaking clearly and directly
Writing to the needs of the audience
Negotiating responsively
Reading independently
Empathising
Using numeracy effectively
Understanding the needs of internal and external customers
Persuading effectively
Establishing and using networks
Being assertive
Sharing information
Speaking and writing in languages other than English.

Teamwork

Working with people of different ages, gender, race, religion or political persuasion
Working as an individual and as a member of a team
Knowing how to define a role as part of a team
Applying teamwork skills to a range of situations eg, crisis
Identifying strengths of team members
Coaching, mentoring, and giving feedback.

Technology

Having a range of basic IT skills
Applying IT as a management tool
Using IT to organise data
Being willing to learn new IT skills
Having the occupational health and safety knowledge to apply technology
Having the appropriate physical capacity.

Problem Solving

Developing creative, innovative solutions
Developing practical solutions
Showing independence and initiative in identifying problems and solving them
Solving problems in teams
Applying a range of strategies to problem solving
Using mathematics including budgeting and financial management to solve problems
Applying problem-solving strategies across a range of areas
Testing assumptions, taking the context of data and circumstances into account
Resolving customer concerns in relation to complex project issues.

Self-Management

Having a personal vision and goals
Evaluating and monitoring own performance
Having knowledge and confidence in own ideas and vision
Articulating own ideas and vision
Taking responsibility.

Planning

Managing time and priorities – setting timelines, coordinating tasks for self and others
Being resourceful
Taking initiative and making decisions
Adapting resource allocations to cope with contingencies
Establishing clear project goals and deliverables
Allocating people and resources to tasks
Planning the use of resources including time
Participating in continuous improvement and planning
Developing a vision and a proactive plan to accompany it
Predicting – weighing up risk, evaluating alternatives, applying evaluation criteria
Collecting, analysing, and organising information
Understanding basic business systems and their relationships.

Learning

Managing own learning
Contributing to the learning community at the workplace
Using a range of mediums to learn – mentoring, peer support, networking, IT, courses
Applying learning to technical issues (eg, products) and people issues (eg, interpersonal)
Having enthusiasm for ongoing learning
Being willing to learn in any setting, on and off the job
Being open to new ideas and techniques
Being prepared to invest time and effort in learning new skills
Acknowledging the need to learn in order to accommodate change.