Good people skills — they’re what graduate recruiters really, really want

Good people skills are crucial for getting into the graduate job market, according to the findings of an academic study published by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (HESCU) in its Graduate Market Trends newsletter earlier this year.

The research into graduate employability, carried out by academics from the University of East Anglia, found that employers valued interpersonal skills above all other employability skills, followed by written communication skills.

Some recruiters expressed great concern about students’ lack of written skills, and one public sector HR manager told the researchers that this was ‘a serious deficit in the skills of young people’, adding, ‘An enormous amount of my time is spent supervising the written work of those who are otherwise very intelligent and able people.’

The next most highly valued employability skills were, in order of importance:

• IT skills
• experience of the work environment
• commercial or business awareness
• numeracy skills
• presentation skills.

The study, based on a sample of employers of different sizes in Norfolk, found that personal attributes such as honesty, integrity and trustworthiness were very highly valued and were required on appointment ahead of any other skill or competence. Technical skills were not expected to be as highly developed on appointment as so-called soft skills such as the ability to listen and integrate into a team, and employers were prepared to wait for up to a year for technical skills to develop.

The researchers commented, ‘For many employers, less is expected regarding technical skills than the one thing that all graduates are presumably good at: the ability to present ideas clearly, both verbally and in writing.’

• The top ten skills that’ll get you a job when you graduate

Posted by Alison_TARGETjobs on 13 July 2010

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