Skills and employability
Audio and transcript
Two members of the OU Careers Advisory Team (Wendy and Ellen) provide some advice and guidance on skills and employability.
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Ellen says: The types of skills and competencies that an employer would be looking for are a whole range of different things.
It may depend on what type of work you're looking for as to the mix of competencies, but there are a wide range of employers who don't actually mind what subject you have studied, it's actually the skills that you have developed as part of that study.
So for example, things like initiative, problem solving, and project management are skills that the Association of Graduate Recruiters have quite recently said that they're looking for from from graduates and from students, and they're finding hard to find. And we know that OU students will be developing those sorts of skills.
Wendy says: In terms of employability, you need to be aware that once you finish your degree and you're applying for jobs, employers are looking for a range of skills and competencies that suit the job that you're applying for.
So it's important that students are aware of how their skills can be transferable to the workplace.
Employers are looking for a range of skills and competencies. When you apply for jobs you will notice that in the job description they will tell you about the job, but they will also give you a person specification. This is to tell you what they are looking for. Sometimes they call it skills, sometimes they call it qualities, sometimes they call it competencies. So you need to be aware to look out for all of these terms. Employers are looking for a wide range of skills.
It's very important to reflect on the skills that you have and the ones that you use throughout your OU degree. The reason for this is that, when you finish your degree and you you are looking to go onto the next step, you need to know what sorts of skills you've got to help you to move to progress. It's important that you take some time to reflect on those skills and and your abilities.
It's important that you think carefully about the types of skills and qualities you have. If you have a particular career in mind, you may find that you have some gaps, that there are qualities that you need, or some experience that you need, that you haven't yet got. So it's important to start early so that you can plan for the future and develop some of the things that you need.
For example, you may decide that you want to go into a career as a psychologist, as a professional psychologist. If you want to do this, you need to have work experience and you need to have a variety and a wide range of work experience. You won't get into onto the next level course if you haven't got that.
So it's important to plan early, to think carefully about what you want to do, and how you can do it in order to get there. For you as a student you may decide that you're not really sure about what career you want to do. So it may be that you need to go to a careers advisor. This can help you in terms of your action planning and start to help you make some decisions and focus on the skills that you need and that the the course of action you need to take next.