Employability Skills
At Gable Hall, we believe that every lesson and every experience is a chance to develop your employability skills. When you apply for a job, your future employer will be paying close attention to what evidence you can provide to show you have the employability skills they are looking for. Almost every classroom at Gable Hall has a poster displaying the top employability skills currently sought after, have you noticed?
This section of the website looks closely at these key employability skills and how you should and could be developing these skills every day, to make sure you stand out to your future employers!
Aiming High - Self Motivation
Is there a project that you'd like to do but you're putting it off? Maybe you think you don't have the time or maybe you just can't be bothered. Think of the bigger picture and how you will benefit from that project in the long run. Set your mind to it and plan. Use the strategies above and some of the links below to help you prioritise and organise your time.
You can keep track of anything you do to develop your employability skills on Kudos.
- Time management and Productivity Training Video
- Managing your priorities
- Analyse Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
- Setting SMART goals
Creativity - By using online courses, you can better understand employability skills and take extra steps to develop any skills you need work on. To develop your creativity, try these sessions by Barclays Life Skills (you will need to make a free account). Creativity is becoming more and more important in the workplace. Employers want to hire people who can think outside of the box and use their imagination to come up with original and innovative ideas however big or small.
- Understanding creative thinking
- How making a pizza got me a promotion
- Putting creative thinking into action
Communication - There aren't many jobs that don't require good communication skills and we have lots of opportunities to develop our communication skills at school. We may think of communication just as speaking, for example public speaking, but we can't communicate properly without writing, reading, listening and clear understanding.
- Understanding communication
- Sophie takes the communication challenge
- Communication and interpersonal skills
Independence - Employers love employees who are independent and proactive, who don't need to be told to get on with a task and who come up with potential solutions, rather than allowing problems to be an obstacle.
When have you had to work on your own to achieve something?
When have you gone the extra mile to achieve something without being asked to do so?
Leadership - Leadership is the ability to get the best out of a team of people as you collectively work to tackle a task, or reach an objective. This is essential in most jobs and especially if you'd like to manage people some day.
Problem Solving - You use your problem solving and critical thinking in almost every lesson (not just maths!) especially in exams. Often it is your critical thinking and problem solving skills that help you to better understand the subject. These skills in particular will make you highly employable. Many graduate jobs require you to sit assessments before you're considered for the job and these will typically test your verbal and numerical reasoning - in other words, your problem solving and critical thinking.
Resilience - Even when it may seem like a problem will not go away, resilience and staying positive can help you keep going, deal with your problems positively and continue on towards your goals.
Teamwork - Working well in a team means:
- Working with a group of people to achieve a shared goal or outcome in an effective way
- Listening to other members of the team
- Taking everyone’s ideas on board, not just your own
- Working for the good of the group as a whole
- Having a say and sharing responsibility
A successful team is one where everyone’s unique skills and strengths help the team achieve a shared goal in the most effective way.
If you have good people skills you’ll make a good team player, and skills like communication and having a positive attitude make a team great.
By using online resources you can look further into how to develop your teamwork and read about other successful teams and get advice on what to do when things don't go to plan.
