THE CAREERS AND HIGHER EDUCATION MAGAZINE FROM THE INSPIRING FUTURES FOUNDATION


“You’re hired!”
What is Sir Alan looking for in his apprentice?
John Botten, former Chairman of the National Education Business Partnership Network and Director of Warwickshire EBP, reflects on what every young person needs to succeed as an employee and why transferable skills are so important.

Having spent the last 20 years of my life trying to help young people to prepare for adult and working life, I am fascinated by The Apprentice. The sight of talented 20-somethings who have allegedly made a success of their careers to date making elementary mistakes in their approach to convincing Sir Alan shows how important it is to understand what employers are looking for in their employees.

Over the years I have talked to 100s of employers and they all tell pretty much the same story. Whilst qualifications are necessary to get past the first selection hurdle there are other things which employers then look for. They are: -

Transferable key and/or functional skills
Developed personal qualities such as flair and enthusiasm

and

Appropriate attitudes to work and the working environment

If you can show you have these you are much more likely to be hired. In this article there will only be space to consider transferable skills.

Transferable Skills

Most young people will have come across Key Skills or the more recent Functional Skills. Broadly speaking these are the generic skills needed in most forms of employment, (and highly useful in life in general,) as opposed to the more specialised skills which a doctor or carpenter or engineer or fashion designer might develop through their specialised vocational training. When employers call them Transferable Skills, they simply mean skills potential employees have learned elsewhere but can apply successfully in new and different situations.

The Government’s most common definition in the last few years has been the six Key Skills:-

• Communication
• Application of Number
• Information and Communication Technology.
• Working with Others
• Improving own Learning and Performance
• Problem Solving.

What are the most important transferable skills?

A Labour Market Survey of 1400 employers undertaken in August 2006 revealed that the skills valued most highly were communication skills, rated by 40% of employers as most important to them.

Oral communication

An enormous amount of business is now done by direct communication, whether in face-to-face in meetings, (often with people you may never have met before,) on the telephone or through e-mails. In each of these, the critical challenge is to establish a working relationship. Learning how to talk to a new contact on the telephone is a vital skill in most forms of employment, whilst the etiquette of meetings is equally important; - for example, the reason why people shake hands at meetings is because this enables a relationship of trust to be established and makes introductions easier. E-mails should be viewed as an extension of this oral communication, but again observing the conventions of business transactions.

Written communication

The skills learned in essay planning and writing in school need to be refined in the writing of reports and papers in work contexts. The key issues are clarity, accuracy, the use of good grammar and accurate spelling. The last of these ought to be a given in these days of spell-checks on every computer program, but employers often complain of poor spelling in applications for jobs. Reports also need to provide clear evidence to back up the points made, draw helpful conclusions and make use of illustrative graphs, etc., where relevant.

Powerpoint presentations

Most young people have the opportunity to use Powerpoint whilst still at school or college, so using this skill in business should not pose too many problems. The most important issue is to make the presentation interesting without being gimmicky and ensure that print used is a good size and not too dense. If a specific outcome such as an agreement to your recommendation or an order from a customer is sought you must make this clear! Don’t expect your audience to double-guess your intentions.

Finally, the ability to communicate in a foreign language will be a bonus for many employers, even if your skills are limited to learning some simple social phrases. The next most important characteristics employers were looking for in the survey were both related to behaviour rather than skills. After communication skills employers rated a positive work ethic (39%) and personality (32%) before literacy (26%), formal qualifications (25%) and numeracy (22%).

Literacy differs from communication in that it is additionally about reading and research skills. It is important to most employers that their employees are able to read and absorb a wide variety of materials, as well as knowing how to research specialist areas or information to support proposals or strategies.

Numeracy requirements vary from sector to sector. However, one of the most common skills employers look for is estimation. A skilled roofer can look at a building and estimate the number of tiles needed to a remarkable degree of accuracy. Most employers don’t expect quite so much of their employees, but do want people who will be able to recognise when a computer calculation is wrong. Some of the biggest errors in the world of work have been a result of a misplaced decimal point! So the ability to do mental maths to the point when you recognise a mistake is critical.

Surprisingly, the research did not mention ICT, perhaps because the widespread use of ICT in work-places means that this is taken for granted. New recruits would be expected to be able to use word-processing, Powerpoint, spreadsheets, publisher and web-sites, none of which should present problems to most young people.

The other three skills listed at the outset need less discussion. Every school now offers the opportunity for team-work, but be prepared to illustrate your potential for working in business teams by being able to refer to experiences of team-work. Employers like Sir Alan Sugar expect people to be able to fulfil different roles within teams at different times. They also expect you to know when it is better to use your own initiative and work on your own; - as The Apprentice shows, not all team decisions are good ones!

Managing your own time may be more important in work than solely managing your own learning, but it is important to understand what you have learned from what you have done and experienced, as well as how to learn positive lessons from negative experiences. One employer once told me he was interested in interviewing young people who “had got out of trouble with the police,” because this showed they had learned from their bad experiences.

This example also demonstrates problem-solving, another key skill which you are likely to be asked about at interview.

In conclusion, the most important thing to understand about transferable skills is that you can draw on activities and experiences both in and beyond school or college. To be able to show to employers what you learned from your work experience and any other part-time or holiday work is vital; to be able to draw on sport, leisure, church, community and family experiences equally valuable. Transferable skills are a must-have if you want to hear the immortal words, “You’re hired!”