When completing an application form or attending an interview, employers need evidence of your abilities: your competences. It is essential that on the application form you are able to demonstrate your skills through your experiences, and the more varied the situation the better. Judge for yourself: Is hearing about a group exercise where students fundraised and trekked to Kilimanjaro more interesting to read about than a group exercise where students completed a presentation?
Students need to consider how they build their skills and where. University presents the opportunity not only to develop your skills but to challenge yourself and develop a wide set of experiences which set you apart from other graduates. Those students who fail to engage with extracurricular activities run the risk of not only limiting their development but also the range of examples they can use when completing an application form.
The development of soft skills has become increasingly important in today’s economy. It is argued that soft skills contribute £88 billion to the UK economy and it is forecast to rise to £109 billion. The importance of soft skills is reflected by employers: 97% of employers believe that soft skills (in particular teamwork and communication) are essential to business success and are becoming increasingly more important than academic results. (Development of Economics Ltd, 2015)
This chapter will help you not only identify the skills valued by employers, but will also provide examples of how you can build these skills.
Self-management
Are you good with meeting deadlines? Are you organised? Do you use your own initiative?
If you can answer yes to these questions that’s great, but if you can’t manage yourself how can employers expect you to manage at work? Employers will expect you to be organised, punctual, working to deadlines and a self-starter. How you manage yourself and your approach to your work is key to being employable. Your first management role is self-management.
So what do we mean when we talk about self-management?
The CBI (2011) defines self-management as the ‘readiness to accept responsibility, flexibility, resilience, self-starting, appropriate assertiveness, time management, readiness to improve own performance based on feedback/reflective learning’.
So how can you demonstrate you are good at self-management to an employer? The best way to demonstrate self-management is to look for examples in your current roles.
Do you work part time? Do you have responsibilities at home? Are you a mentor? These are excellent examples to demonstrate your ability to be responsible.
Employers will expect you to manage your time effectively and use your own initiative. Think of examples of where you have had to balance several assignment deadlines. How did you achieve this? Preparation, planning and organisation are essential for effective time management.
You can always learn from your experiences, so it is important to use feedback and reflection to see how you could have performed a task better. There is always room for improvement.
You can gain valuable personal insight by gathering feedback from other students, your tutors or professors, mentors, friends and even family members. Ask them to think about both your strengths and areas you could improve on. For example:
- What should you do more of/keep doing?
- What should you do less of/stop doing?
Often others see you differently to how you see yourself and their answers will help you identify and build on your skills and areas of possible weaknesses.
Jo Blissett, Career Development Consultant, Career Quest
Worried about juggling a new volunteer role alongside your existing study commitments?
First, do not fret, as flexible volunteering where you offer your services as a volunteer as and when it suits you is now increasingly common. Second, your commitment to a volunteer role demonstrates not only motivation and drive to a potential employer, but organisational skills including planning and time management.
Meeting and dealing with new people through voluntary work will not only develop your patience and empathy towards others, but will demonstrate your ability to negotiate new and sometimes stressful scenarios. Being able to remain calm under pressure and think positively will help you to stand out both during the recruitment process and in the workplace. To get involved with a cause you’re passionate about that has you jumping out of bed on a rainy Sunday morning, take a look at Do-it.org (https://do-it.org/), a national volunteering database.
Jamie Ward-Smith, CEO, Do-it.org
Self-management is an excellent indicator for an employer of how you will cope in the workplace. You will have many tasks to manage and demonstrating that you can multi-task successfully is a great skill. The ability to balance a commitment alongside your academic studies is an excellent demonstration of your time management, organisational and self-management skills.
Teamworking
What do Barcelona FC, the United Nations and Great Ormond Street Hospital have in common? They all achieve success through teamwork. Each member of the team plays a vital role, and that ensures their success.
The CBI (2011) stated that at the heart of teamworking is ‘respecting others, cooperating, negotiating/persuading, contributing to discussions, an awareness of interdependence with others’.
In today’s workforce this has become even more prevalent, and as a result employers include teamworking exercises in their selection processes to assess how well new graduates work in teams. An assessment centre will often include a group exercise, centred around a team of potential candidates working together to find a solution to a problem. This provides the recruiters with a good indication of how candidates work with others, as often within the work environment, teams are formed across the organisation.
Why is teamworking important?
So why is teamworking important? In today’s rapidly changing marketplace organisations are faced with challenges, which cannot be addressed by one department. The challenge affects the organisation as a whole, and so teams are drawn from both across functions, but also globally. When devising solutions an organisation will need to have the knowledge from within its organisation and possibly from an expert consultant drawn from within its particular sector.
Collaboration is key in developing competitive advantage within the marketplace. This can involve collaborating externally with suppliers to develop new processes or new products. Working in teams enables an organisation to harness the expertise which exists both internally and externally. A team is much better placed to respond to the challenges faced in the competitive marketplace, as it enables the organisation to consider the challenge from many perspectives at once, and develop a solution that incorporates the needs of all of the business.
Teams come in different shapes and sizes. One size does not fit all. Throughout your time at university students will experience many different types of teams. As a member of a student society or club, students may find themselves working as a team to organise events, recruit members and fundraise. Other opportunities to work within a team are through sports, volunteering or even a group assignment.
Developing teamworking skills
University is the perfect place to develop teamworking skills. Often students work part time, which presents the opportunity to develop teamworking skills in a live environment, and the experience will enhance many other employability skills such as communication.
Whether you work in retail, fast food or tourism you will be part of a team and begin to understand the dynamics of working collectively towards a common goal. This goal could be to meet sales targets, to fundraise a specific amount or to collectively work together to enhance the customer experience.
Within the work environment teams exist in varying formats. Project teams will be created to address a specific business challenge. Often a team can be created virtually in order to capture the knowledge and experience of co-workers located nationally or even globally. Technology, in particular Skype and Google Hangouts, facilitate the ability to speak with teams virtually.
When working virtually and internationally communication skills become even more important, especially if the team is drawn globally. Time zones, cultures and customs become important factors to ensure the team works effectively and respectfully together.
Virtual teams
Virtual teams are now commonplace and I have run them for many years. In a global business coupled with cost pressures, virtual team-working is now a business necessity and doing this right can add a huge competitive advantage. Here are my top five tips for managing a successful team.
- Manage cultural dynamics: Many virtual teams will incorporate different cultures and there is a need to manage conscious and unconscious biases to ensure the right behaviours and expectations.
- Communication: Always have a clear agenda and appropriate lead time for pre-reading meeting documents. Allocate who will manage minutes, actions and general communications.
- Time zones: There is a need to be sensitive regarding time zones, if possible. Try to rotate times so that alternate time slots can be scheduled to limit individuals being subjected to regular early mornings or late night calls.
- Respect: Set out clear rules to ensure all team members can be heard and the team actually listens. The chair has to carefully manage engagement.
- Technology platform: The communication platform has to be stable and accessible. It can be very disruptive to have platforms that are unreliable. This will hamper the progress but also the overall morale in the team.
Virtual teams are invaluable in the workplace, but it must be set up for success. The above dynamics are just a handful of critical success factors to manage a virtual team.
Carol René, Enterprise Lead Information and
Data Architect, Shell International Petroleum Company
What role would you play in a team?
Teams are created to provide a collective response to challenges faced by the organisation. What role do you think you would play in a team? Review these team roles and see which role reflects your skills.
- The project manager manages the team and takes on the responsibility of ensuring the project is delivered on time.
- The expert, as the name suggests, is a specialist in their field and highlights the impact of any solutions to the organisation and end-users.
- The innovator challenges the status quo and adopts a creative approach to tasks.
- The analyst evaluates all of the proposed solutions and highlights possible risks.
- The finisher ensures that all of the documentation and other outputs from the team tasks are submitted.
To review your role within ask your careers service to conduct a Myers Briggs test, which will highlight your position of strength in a team.
Certain skills and attributes are needed for a team to perform effectively. Respect is essential as you will not always be working with people you know or even like. Teams are often required to present their results or write a progress report, which will require good communication skills. The ability to negotiate or persuade is central to sourcing resources or convincing the team of a particular course of action. The success of the team is dependent on members sharing their knowledge and skills. A ‘critical friend’ asking challenging questions ensures that solutions are debated in full.
Conflict management and problem-solving
First, let me start by saying that when working in a team I believe conflict is inevitable and therefore unavoidable – even for those who really try their hardest to avoid it. Preparing yourselves in advance for any potential clashes by practising conflict management skills is a must if you wish to succeed in your chosen career.
One of the best ways to help you develop a constructive approach to conflict really begins long before you are even involved in one – by ‘accepting’ that conflict is inevitable and will occur at some point, as it will help you to positively prepare yourself. The ability to manage conflict in a constructive and positive manner is increasingly becoming a sought after ’soft skill’ in the work environment.
How you manage the conflicts you face at work will play a huge part in your successes in life, as when carried out effectively, you will be able to create harmonious and respectful relationships which enhance the working environment around you. You will therefore increase your employability skills and begin to progress at work.
The top five qualities needed when managing conflict are the following:
- patience
- respect (for others)
- empathy
- (active) listening
- think win–win.
Lex A Showunmi, Company Director and
Conflict Management Trainer/Practitioner,
3S Partnerships Ltd
Teamworking is a vital part of any organisation. The structure and size of the team is dependent upon the nature of the task. Each member of the team plays a different role, which is equally important and contributes to the success of the project. In order for teams to work effectively team members must have a range of skills.
Business and customer awareness
Business and customer awareness is important to an employer as your opinions demonstrate how you can add value to their organisation. Employers will expect you to understand their markets, their customers and the challenges they face.
As stated by the CBI (2011) ‘graduates should have a basic understanding of the key drivers for business success – including the importance of innovation and taking calculated risks – and the need to provide customer satisfaction and build customer loyalty’.
How do you develop specific sector knowledge?
An insight to your chosen industry sector can be gained by reading newspapers, journals and newsletters from professional bodies. This will not only help you with your employability skills, but you will find you have a better understanding of your lectures and assignments. Your industry knowledge will be more apparent in the conversations you have about your sector and the responses you give in interviews. Below are a few examples of how to stay abreast of your industry:
- Create a Google Alert to refer to a page.
- Company websites provide an insight into the industry and the challenges they face in the competitive market.
- Industry-specific events can help you meet people who work in the industry and give you an insight into the structure of the organisation and the various roles which exist.
Ultimately the best way to gain an insight into an industry is to gain work experience. Work shadowing, internships and placements all provide opportunities for you to not only understand the industry but to see if you want to work in it. As a result, you will gain an insight into how companies manage the users’ experience and build brand loyalty. You can develop this knowledge by reflecting on your own experiences with companies. Customer retention is important for businesses as without customers there is no business. Review company websites and how they build loyalty with their customers.
Problem-solving
The CBI defines problem-solving as ‘analysing facts and situations and applying creative thinking to develop appropriate solutions’.
Organisations continually face challenges from advancing technology, competitors and changing markets so they need employees who can develop innovative solutions that will keep them ahead of the competition. Graduates who are creative, innovative and use their own initiative are essential to developing solutions to the challenges of the future.
How do you develop problem-solving skills?
You already have problem-solving skills. You are faced with challenges every day in both your academic course and your personal life. The skills you use to address these problems are transferable to the workplace. Essentially all problem-solving revolves around ‘gap analysis’, the difference between a desired outcome and the actual outcome. Regardless of whether it is an academic problem or organising an event such as your brother’s wedding you will need to follow a number of steps. These are defined by Bransford and Stein (1984) in their IDEAL problem-solving model, which can be used within a range of contexts.
Identify the problem. What are the essential elements of the problem?
Define the problem through thinking about it and sorting relevant information.
Explore solutions. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each solution?
Act on strategies.
Look back and evaluate the effects of your activity.
Finding a solution may need you to develop additional employability skills. For example, you may need to create a diverse team, use your communication and IT skills to present your ideas or use your numeracy skills to calculate the financial impact of your solutions. As a result, it is important that you recognise the employability skills that you are developing while completing your academic assignments and solving your daily life challenges.
Need to learn how to think on your feet? It’s time to say hello to a voluntary role.
As a leader at your local youth club not only will you be entrusted with the safety of the children, but you may need to resolve misunderstandings between members.
As a charity shop supervisor you could be called upon to address customer concerns or negotiate weekly staff rotas. The beauty of volunteering? Things may not always go to plan but you’re sure to be supported by a team of passionate people all working towards the same goal. While it may feel tough at the time, approaching a problem calmly is an important workplace skill that demonstrates your personal resilience and adaptability. Added bonus? Your volunteer experience will leave you ready and raring to go when faced with that old interview chestnut: ‘Tell me about a situation where you had to overcome a difficult problem’. To find a voluntary role near you head to Do-it.org, a national volunteering database.
Jamie Ward-Smith, CEO, Do-it.org
Another tool to develop solutions to challenges is the ‘5 Whys’ developed by the Toyota Motor Corporation in 1950. Toyota developed a method where, by repeating ‘why’ five times, the problem and the solution are revealed through the questioning process. The 5 Whys is used to unveil the root cause of a problem. Once the root has been identified, a solution is developed, which ensures that the problem doesn’t reoccur.
It is important through the questioning phase that the key stakeholders are invited to participate in the process, i.e. all those affected by the problem or the situation. Once the team members have been identified, it is important to drill down at least five levels to identify the root cause of the problem, but initially the problem needs to be clearly defined for the process to work.
The five key stages in the 5 Whys process:
- Identify the key stakeholders – those affected by the problem.
- Assign a team leader to lead and document the process.
- Ask ‘why’ five times.
- Define the solution and assign responsibilities.
- Communicate the outcomes with all stakeholders.
What to do and what not to do when problem-solving
 | Be as specific as possible when thinking and investigating the problem – pinpoint the actual issues using factual information. |
| Find the most important parts of the problem – what are the biggest issues or risks? |
 | Don’t blame others, poor processes or systems for the problem – remain open-minded about the problem and its causes. |
| Do not immediately assume you know what the problem is and the solutions are. |
| Do not go straight to solve the problem before thinking, investigating and gathering information about it (facts, inference, speculation and opinion). |
Mindmaps can give you an overview of a large subject while also holding large amounts of information. They can be an intuitive way to organise your thoughts, since they mimic the way our brains think – bouncing ideas off of each other, rather than thinking linearly.
Jo Blissett, Career Development Consultant, Career Quest
Communication
Communication in essence is the sending of a message by sender A to receiver B. The format of the message can take different forms and the language will vary dependent on the context. There are several different options available.
Face to face
Despite face to face appearing to be the easiest form of communication, messages can still be misinterpreted by the choice of words, body language, tone and the person delivering the message.
Telephone call
Without the aid of visual expression, the choice of words and tone become even more crucial to ensure the receiver interprets the message accurately. Telephone interviews are often used during the selection process, and students would be advised to practise beforehand, as diction, tone and clarity are paramount.
Written communication
Written communication can take various form, including CVs, reports and covering letters. The style of writing, presentation and choice of words can all affect the way the message is delivered and received.
Social media
Twitter, What’sApp, LinkedIn, Facebook and instant messaging can be misinterpreted due to the incorrect use of upper or lower case, the insertion of an emoticon or an abbreviation. Although an accepted means of communication, it is heavily criticised if not used in the right context.
Effective communication
So how can we communicate effectively? When delivering a message, you need to take into account the context. In what context is the message being delivered? Professional, academic or social. The mode of delivery should reflect the context along with the choice of words.
In addition, to avoid any confusion use the 7Cs of communication
- Clear: Ensure the aim and purpose of your message is clear from the outset of your written or verbal communication.
- Concise: Less is more when communicating so be brief and targeted.
- Concrete: Be focused in your communication and ensure that you are specific, factual and provide the required level of detail.
- Correct: Ensure that your spelling, facts and grammar are correct. Also ensure that the tone, language and choice of words fit the context.
- Coherent: Reread your message to ensure that it is logical and your ideas flow smoothly.
- Complete: Ensure your communication contains the necessary information required by the receiver to respond.
- Courteous: Ensure that you address the recipient politely and appropriately.
(Modified from Cutlip and Center, 1952)
In summary, when communicating you need to understand the context within which the message is to be delivered, that you choose the right medium for delivery and you choose your words carefully. And then use the 7 Cs of communication to avoid any misinterpretation of your message.
Communication skills can be developed through your academic study or extracurricular activities. Academically your presentation skills and written assignments are all opportunities for you to be assessed on how well you communicate. In addition to the academic environment, opportunities will arise to develop communication skills in different contexts. For example, at networking meetings, engaging with student societies or participating in mock interviews. It is important that you are able to communicate in a wide range of contexts including professional, academic and social.
Application of IT
Technology is transforming, disrupting and reshaping all industries. No organisation is insulated from the rapid changes taking place within the technology sector, but it’s the resounding ripples and waves that affect all industries as well. The dramatic advances in technology are causing industries to question their purpose in the future. An example of this is the retail banking sector.
‘There are so many different ways that you can make payments these days; you can pay by email, by Paypal and you can pay by your mobile phone, but all of that relies on the same plumbing and predominately it’s the banks that provide that plumbing. Right now it’s of value to us but I think we are in danger of just becoming the plumbing.’ (Mortimer, 2015)
Industries are not just facing change – they are facing disruption. As a graduate you will be expected to be IT savvy. Question how technology could improve your processes or add value to your role. Continually update your IT skills, undertake short courses to learn about new technologies and new ways of performing tasks.
The application of IT involves the ability to demonstrate basic IT skills, including the familiarity with word processing, spreadsheets, file management and email. These skills can be developed through completing the assessments on your courses: word processing your coursework, using visual aids for presentations. On campus there will be support classes to develop your IT skills. Extracurricular activities can also be used as a means to develop these skills.
IT skills are essential so don’t leave university without them. And make sure you keep them up to date. Course providers, such as UDemy, Coursera or General Assembley, provide short courses to ensure your skills remain current.
Application of numeracy and data analysis
How’s your mental maths? Can you analyse data and provide the best course of action? Are you financially literate? When was the last time you calculated an average, percentage or fraction? Well, all of these maths elements can and do feature in selection tests and assessment centres. Numeracy is like Marmite – you either love it or hate it. But either way employers love it.
Numeracy
‘the manipulation of numbers, general mathematical awareness and its application in practical contexts’
CBI, 2011
Numbers are everywhere and underpin many decisions made in organisations, so as a future graduate you need to understand what numeracy means for your sector. Generally, employers will expect you to have an understanding of mental arithmetic tasks like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Graduates will also be expected to analyse quantitative and qualitative data, interpret them and present the data in a visual format. You will also need to understand the financial implications of changes in the marketplace on an organisation, their products and profit margins.
Whether you are an arts, law or tourism graduate you need to have basic numeracy skills. Selection processes can include timed mental maths tests, so it’s important to refresh these skills before applying to internships or graduate roles.
Practice tests can be found at the following sites:
SHL Direct: www.cebglobal.com
Talentlens: www.talentlens.co.uk
Leadership
Are you a future leader? Are you a game changer? Or are you able to take ownership of a situation and bring it to resolution?
Leadership comes in many forms and varying personalities. There are some excellent examples of leadership in the public arena from Barack Obama to Steve Jobs, but on a daily basis many employees within organisations demonstrate leadership skills.
Organisations need leaders on many levels to drive and champion success throughout a business. Leaders are not only at the helm of an organisation, as in order to be sustainable an organisation needs talented individuals who contribute to its continued success. Graduate schemes develop the pipeline of future leaders within the organisation.
How do we define leadership? As stated by the Chartered Institute of Professional Development (CIPD): ‘there is no single definition or concept of leadership that satisfies all’.
Leadership is expected from the CEO right down to the most junior employee. Everyone has their part to play in ensuring excellence is maintained. The CIPD defines leadership as:
‘the capacity to influence people, by means of personal attributes and/or behaviours to achieve a common goal’.
This is applicable to the CEO, who has to devise the vision and strategy to the graduate, who joins the organisation and works together with the team to achieve a common goal.
What to do and not do to be an effective leader
- Be yourself: There’s no ’right’ model for a leader, so don’t feel you have to be someone else.
- Know your own strengths and weaknesses: As well as knowing where to improve, you can organise teams to complement your own skills.
- Resist the temptation to ’do it yourself’: The best leaders encourage their teams to deliver.
- Define what success looks like: Help people to understand what they are aiming for – the more inspirational the better.
- Don’t be afraid to admit when you are wrong: People will respect you more, not less.
What to do and not do when you are leading a task or group
- Be clear on the objective and keep reminding people of it to keep on track.
- Find out what the different strengths of your team members are, and make the most of them.
- Make sure everyone gets some recognition, especially afterwards.
- Don’t allow those with the loudest voices to dominate the group. Make sure you involve everyone.
- Don’t feel it’s all down to you: your job is to get the best from the team not to have the best ideas yourself.
- Don’t be afraid to make decisions. Consensus can’t always be reached.
John Garnett, Board Advisor, Consultant and former Managing Director
In your graduate application form or the interview you will undoubtedly be asked to provide examples of where you have demonstrated your leadership skills. While at university there are several opportunities for you to develop your skills such as student societies, part-time jobs, volunteering, etc.
Take ownership of a task by developing an action plan of how the goal will be achieved. Employers will be interested in how you approached the task and your learning points. The actual outcome (although a successful one is always good) is immaterial; the way you handle the challenge, plan your time and liaise with others is more important. These will show your ability to lead a team to resolution.
The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and leadership skills
Strong leadership skills are developed while doing a DofE programme. As part of a small team, you will plan, practise and complete an expedition. You will have to do a volunteering activity, no doubt taking yourself out of your comfort zone. This will allow you to gain vital leadership skills, whether by encouraging the rest of your expedition group through a particularly tough time, or leading and guiding your local youth group or sports team. The skills developed will be something that you are able to take through life with you, and that will also become invaluable to future employers.
Peter Westgarth, Chief Executive, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award
Enterprise
In today’s competitive market, regardless of the sector or role that you are recruited into, employers want graduates who are not afraid to disrupt the status quo. The ability to understand and interpret current processes, and how they are interconnected and interrelated, gives rise to opportunities to identify areas for improvement. Being entrepreneurial is not limited to starting your own business; organisations benefit from staff being intrapreneurs, developing new products and processes from within the organisation. This helps to maintain their competitive advantage.
The National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship (NCGE) states that to add value an entrepreneurial graduate needs to: ‘have the entrepreneurial skills that enable them to seize opportunities, solve issues and problems, generate and communicate ideas and make a difference in their communities’.
Students need to seize opportunities where they can be creative and innovative and develop their initiative skills. These can be achieved through involvement with either student societies or small businesses. Both provide opportunities for students to use their initiative to achieve specific goals. In particular, due to small businesses often operating with minimal staff, students can often find that they are exposed to more responsibility within a shorter timescale.
Being entrepreneurial is a must as students need to demonstrate how they will add value to the organisation.
Emotional intelligence
Businesses continually face challenging, demanding and transforming landscapes, and so workforces need to manage and respond accordingly. Companies increasingly realise that the emotional intelligence (EI) of their employees plays an important role in determining an individual’s response to a situation or to other people.
As a result, emotional intelligence has become increasingly important when identifying new talent. The leaders of tomorrow need to develop their ability to remain objective and make decisions based on the facts and data related to the situation.
‘Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth’
Mayer & Salovey, 1997, p. 87
Daniel Goleman (2014) identified four key components of an individual’s emotional intelligence:
- Self-awareness: The ability to recognise how their feelings will affect their job performance.
- Self-management: The ability to demonstrate self-control and remain calm and clear-headed even during highly pressured situations.
- Social awareness: The ability to listen to what is said and more importantly what is unsaid and allow this to guide both your interaction with others and your decision-making.
- Relationship management: Employees with high emotional intelligence have the ability to inspire, influence, develop others, challenge the status quo and manage conflict.
These four elements underpin the ability to perform effectively both within a team and when facing challenging situations within the workplace.
Developing and improving your emotional intelligence
The ability to manage people and relationships is highly regarded by employers, so developing and using your EI can be a great way to show an employer why you stand out in the graduate recruitment market.
Carrying out your own self-evaluation is the first step to developing and improving your EI. You need to look at yourself honestly and identify your strengths and weakness. In addition, you can consider the points and advice in the table below.
| Observe how you react to people |
|
|
| Examine how you react to stressful situations |
|
|
| Consider how your actions will affect others – before you take action |
|
|
Jo Blissett, Career Development Consultant, Career Quest
When considering the importance of emotional intelligence, you must also consider resilience, the ability to bounce back following an adverse decision.
Resilience
‘the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of stress’
The American Psychological Association
Having the resolve to continue, whether it be with applications or a challenging situation, is a testament to an individual’s character. The graduate market is increasingly competitive in nature, forcing graduates to become more resilient in order to survive. One application is unlikely to result in a positive outcome, and so graduates will receive several rejection letters before securing a graduate position. As a result, resilience is becoming increasingly important to a graduate’s success.
There are many opportunities to develop resilience throughout your time at university. For example, a willingness to strive for better grades and to act on feedback from your assignments. In extracurricular activities resilience can be demonstrated by completing challenging tasks such as charity fundraising sky dives, triathlons, marathons, etc.
The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and resilience
Young people are stronger than they think, and the great thing about doing a DofE programme is that it shows them this. Resilience is a work-ready skill, demonstrating that the individual has the capacity to recover quickly from a difficult situation. Learning to put up a tent in all weathers and undertake an expedition in the pouring rain can really test a person. If you can achieve this, many employers will see that you have a trait in you that is gold dust within the workplace.
Peter Westgarth, Chief Executive, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award
Resilience, opportunities and questions
I recognised my need for resilience upon graduation to avoid accepting my immediate reality. I asked myself what my purpose in life was and where I wanted to be. From there I bullet-pointed my answers and set myself deadlines. I looked for opportunities that would push me to my final destination, as opposed to going into a job that had better financial gain but less opportunity for growth.
I became proactive and sought successful people within my field and was not afraid to ask them questions about their routes to success and what barriers they faced. They said: ‘Know your strengths and weaknesses, stand out from the crowd and get comfortable being uncomfortable, as when you’re comfortable your success is limited’. I took these words and ran with it and each year from 2010 I have achieved something bigger and better.
After university, my full focus was to be the best version of myself within the sporting industry. I soon realised from assessing my strengths and weaknesses along with personal experiences that I had the drive and determination to start my own business. I set up SLR Fitness (personal training) and made many mistakes but learnt from them. I was also told you should not be fearful of failing in aid of wanting to do something you love or wanting to achieve something as it is all a learning curve.
Remember the most valuable stones (diamonds) come out of really dark places so when you feel all the walls are crashing in, do not stay in that dark place, step out and be that shining diamond.
Here are five tips to develop your resilience:
- Get comfortable being uncomfortable.
- Be persistent and do not take NO for an answer.
- Follow up on everything.
- Be opportunity-focused as opposed to money-focused.
- Be around positive, ambitious individuals in a better position than yourself and ask questions.
Stefan Lloyd, SLR Fitness
- Developing employability skills, competences and attributes underpin the success of today’s graduate.
- In 2015 it is estimated that soft skills contribute £88 billion to the UK economy.
- 97% of UK employers believe that soft skills underpin the success of their business and their importance is valued more than academic results.
- 75% of employers have identified a soft skills gap in today’s workforce.
- Self-management is your first trial at being a manager.
- The range of challenges faced by organisations require a multitude of skills and expertise to develop a comprehensive solution.
- Business and customer awareness are essential to understand the challenges and opportunities faced by the organisation.
- Organisations continually face challenges and it is important to identify the key stakeholders and collaborate to provide a solution.
- Communication is an essential skill and will underpin the ability to secure a role within an organisation, and to maintain that role.
- Graduates are the future leaders within an organisation.
- Emotional intelligence is just as important as the technical skills an individual brings to an organisation.