Employability: the engine of your graduate career

Employability is an individual’s ability to gain employment. Since your chances of getting a job are influenced by external factors such as the state of the labour market, it’s not just about the achievements written down on your CV; employability is a dynamic quality that changes over time, depending on the circumstances you find yourself in, your skill at adapting to new situations and making the most of opportunities, and your personal development. Employability enables you to drive your career forward and respond to changing conditions along the way.

Knowledge, skills and attitudes all have a part to play. You can boost your employability through academic achievement, gaining hard skills such as IT know-how, and developing soft skills such as communication and time management through work experience and extracurricular activities. Your personal characteristics are crucial too: qualities such as trustworthiness and reliability are fundamental.

In order to get a graduate job you need to be aware of how to present yourself, where to look for the opening you want, and when to apply, as some sectors and employers follow a yearly recruitment cycle. Maximise your employability by knowing how to showcase your suitability for a job, for example, by using a spellchecker and appropriate, formal English in your written applications, dressing smartly for careers fairs, and turning up for interview on time.

Networking, using your university careers service, and spending time on this website, researching careers and job application advice, will help you maintain and fine-tune your employability, and keep you up to speed about the routes open to you and the career prospects they offer.

Employability isn’t just about what you’ve done; it’s also about your approach to getting wherever you want to go.

• Research into graduate employability: good people skills top employers’ wishlists
• Gaining employability skills at university
• Where to begin your job-hunt

Posted by Alison_TARGETjobs on 27 July 2010

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