Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to analyse the transferable skills that a student gains from their college experience and how these skills are important for their future employment. The essay will analyse two transferable skills that a student gains from their university or college education.
One of the most important purposes and outcomes of a student’s college experience is the acquisition of skills and knowledge. It has long been recognised that the role of higher education is not to simply equip students with knowledge but to provide them with skills that will be used in contributing to the global economy. These skills are also necessary in developing the holistic nature of the student which will allow them to advance their careers professionally.
The current job market and the recent global recession have created a competitive situation in the labour market where the people with most skills, knowledge and job experience are more competitive than their counterparts.
Having skills that are needed by an employer ensures that people looking for work in a particular company have a higher chance of being hired. Recent trends in the graduate employment industry around the world have shown that the traditional positions reserved for graduates in organizations have continued to become fewer and fewer over time.
Graduate employees are now expected to perform their work effectively and efficiently as soon as they enter into their work positions. This requires them to utilise the skills gained while they were pursuing their higher education. It therefore becomes important for them to acquire important transferable skills that will be necessary once they begin working in the corporate world (University of Exeter 2010).
Transferable Skills
Two types of skills that have been identified to be essential for employers when hiring new graduates into their companies include the content skills and the transferable skills. Content skills which are also referred to as cognitive or intellectual skills are the skills that a person acquires while they gain academic mastery of their field of education.
Content skills include computer or IT literacy, reading and writing skills, and foreign language skills. IT literacy or computer skills have now gained a lot of importance and are considered as core skills by most employers who are looking to hire new graduates into their companies (Gardner et al 2007).
Content skills that are related to a person’s field of academic experience include the type of information the person has on the academic field, the rules and principles of the field of education and how the educational information can be applied to the professional context. Certain employers expect new recruits to have extensive knowledge on their academic field of study before they are hired.
This applies to fields such as accounting, finance or marketing. Other employers might require content skills based on the fundamental aspects of the academic field of study (Gardner et al 2007).
Transferable skills are defined as the skills and abilities that a person acquires during any activity they perform in their life. These skills are developed in one state so that they can be transferred for use in another situation.
Examples of transferable skills include communication skills, problem solving skills, presentation skills, self- management skills, leadership skills, skills for negotiation, language, computer literacy, interpersonal skills, and multi tasking capabilities (Foster 1998). The two transferable skills that will be focused on in the essay will be communication skills which encompass oral and written communication and leadership skills.
Communication skills require an individual to demonstrate a solid understanding of oral, listening, reading and writing capabilities. Communication skills require a person to have presentation skills which involve having the ability to orally justify and persuade people as well as to respond intellectually to questions, criticisms that might arise during the presentation. Communication is viewed to be an important transferable skill as it provides the basic means for relaying one’s opinions, ideas and thoughts to other people.
Employers expect their employees to be able to communicate properly both in the oral and written context. Employers normally use the following criteria to assess the communication skills of potential employees; whether they can speak and write effectively, whether they can understand the message that is being relayed, whether they can conduct oral and written presentations to communicate information to other co-workers (Foster 1998).
Leadership skills are the abilities that a person has to take control or manage the particular needs of an organization. Having leadership skills enables an individual to make effective decisions, manage other people to achieve or accomplish a certain range of tasks, encourage other people through motivation and take responsibility for certain tasks.
Leadership skills are meant to show willingness and an active interest in the individual when they perform certain tasks which enable them to progress to another level. Employers who look for graduate management trainees usually consider communication and leadership skills as important transferable skills for any graduates who wish to work in these positions (Gardner et al 2007).
Third level graduates acquire communication and leadership skills when they participate in class assignments, group assignments or oral presentations within the class context. Most university and college courses incorporate such approaches into their learning modules as a way of preparing students to be effective communicators (in written and oral) and leaders in both the class and work context.
Students who have good communication and leadership skills are most likely to be identified by employers as potential management material. Acquiring these skills while in school is seen as important given the ever changing and competitive labour market (Ingbretsen 2009).
Importance of Transferable Skills to Employers
Transferable skills are valuable to many kinds of employers and to the various types of professions that exist in the business world. They ensure that potential employees have a sense of flexibility that allows them to plan for their careers as well as develop career progression activities.
Developing student’s skills through higher education involves fostering the development of transferable skills developed in one situation to be used in a different situation. Students gain transferable skills when they participate in volunteer work, when they study in a foreign country, when they become involved in student professional organizations while in college and when they pursue hobbies and interests that develop their interpersonal, communication and leadership skills (Gardner et al 2007).
According to the results of a study conducted to determine what transferable skills employers looked for in third level graduates, most employers stated they looked at the graduate’s personality and their enthusiasm for work in the company. Other employers looked at the work experience and academic records of the graduates before they decided on whether to hire them or not.
These were mostly employers who wanted to develop the graduates’ transferable skills once they were hired for the position. Other employers who were surveyed in the study showed that they choose transferable skills such as oral communication, team work and time management which they saw as important for employees to deal with multiple tasks (Curry et al 2003).
The study also surveyed employers who had recently recruited employees who were third level graduates. When asked if they were satisfied with the transferable skills that these graduates had, most of the employers showed that they were satisfied with the IT and numeric skills that recent graduates demonstrated in their work. The employers were also satisfied with the oral communication, team work and customer service skills that were demonstrated by these employees.
The skills that the employers were least satisfied with included time management, written communication such as reports and proposals, the ability to cope with multiple tasks, planning and presentation skills. The surveyed employers did not view foreign languages as an important transferable skill when it came to employing third level graduates into their companies (Curry et al 2003).
The principal methods that were used to determine and assess the transferable skills of the third level graduates during the selection and recruitment process included face to face interviews, resumes, aptitude tests, psychometric testing and reference checks. These showed that the techniques were the most commonly used recruitment methods by most companies included in the study.
The suggestions that the employers gave out that would be used by higher education institutions to improve the transferable skills of third level graduates were to conduct supervised work placements, the use of industry specific workshops, and case studies that would develop the transferable skills of the graduates. The employers also offered suggestions on the use of transferable skill courses in college education particularly in group work and class presentations (Curry et al 2003).
When recruiting graduates employers viewed transferable skills as the third highest priority in a group of nine performance factors. These skills were ranked higher than the graduate’s academic record and their work experience. The reason why academic records and work experience were ranked so low is that they were used as criteria for evaluating the graduate’s transferable skills. This means that the academic record and work experience were only considered important when they revealed the transferable skills of the students.
In other cases employers in some organizations hired graduates based on their work attitude instead of their transferable skills which they would later develop during the training and development stage. This particularly applied in cases where the graduate employees were book smart, meaning they had the necessary knowledge to perform the job but they lacked the transferable skills needed for the position (Curry et al 2003).
Conclusion
The main message that has become evident from most employers in both the profit and non profit organizations is that they look for employees who can be able to perform the job effectively and efficiently. Employers look for people or graduate employees who are able to communicate properly as well as take up leadership positions in the course of performing their work.
It is therefore important for third level graduates to hone their communication and leadership skills as well as other transferable skills before they enter into the job market. This can only be accomplished if higher education institutions place more emphasis on career training and progression programs that will see the graduates developing the necessary transferable skills.
References
Curry, P., Sherry, R., and Tunney, O., (2003) What transferable skills do employers look for in third-level graduates? Results of employer survey summary report. Web.
Foster, V., (1998) Developing your employment skills, Wales, UK: Trotman and Company Limited.
Gardner, J.N., Jewler, A.J., and Barefoot, B.O., (2007) Your college experience: strategies for success, Boston, US: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Ingbretsen, R., (2009) What employers really look for when hiring a college graduate. Web.
University of Exeter (2010) Transferable and key skills. Web.