Learn soft skills to gain a tougher edge in the job market

Employability With employability skills the key to a first job,more courses are including them, says Steve McCormack

There used to be a time, a few decades back, when anyone with adegree could more or less guarantee to walk into a job: perhaps nottheir dream job, but certainly something to get started in the worldof employment. But as more young people started to go to university,that certainty began to recede, and we approached the stage where aMasters level qualification was regarded as the minimum requirementto secure that first job.

Now, however, the reality is that, even a sheaf of academicqualifications does not guarantee automatic entry to employment.Graduates, however well qualified, also need to have to be able todemonstrate a set of what are called employability skills to showthey can hit the ground running in the workplace. These include all-round communication skills, the ability to work in a team, and be aself-starter, to be versatile and have a creative approach toproblems.

The need for universities to pass these skills on to students hasbeen spotted by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES),the government agency charged with raising the workplace skilllevels of the population as a whole. In a recent report it bemoanedthe fact that too many universities and colleges neglected to teachemployability skills or, for funding or capacity reasons, found itdifficult to develop them.

UKCES has called on all education institutions to putemployability skills at the heart of almost everything they do,whatever the academic discipline.

But the good news, for prospective students, is that there arealready plenty of universities where great strides have been made inthis very direction.

"Across the board, for each course we are trying to putemployability skills as part of the experience," says Sarah Juillet,director of postgraduate careers, at Cass Business School, part ofLondon's City University.

Cass runs a range of specialist Masters courses, each aimed at aniche business sector, as well as a general management MSc for thestudent still to decide which area to target. "For each of ourcourses we have an advisory board, of professionals from thebusiness sector corresponding to the course content," says Juillet,"and they talk to us a lot about the importance of these skills."

Every student on a Cass course has a "relationship manager"within the Cass careers department, who guides the student through aprogramme of sessions designed to land a job, and thrive once a jobhas started.

Topics covered include the art of cold-calling, something notonly useful in the pursuit of job interviews, but also in carryingout the duties of a job itself. Likewise, the "influencing andpersuading sessions" at Cass try to give students these soft skillsthat they can deploy once in a job, as well as in the job search.

"These skills are very important because it's not like 20 yearsago when most masters students came with a view to moving on to aPhD," says Andrew Clare, associate dean with responsibility for allpostgraduate programmes at Cass. "Today, they want to get thebackground that will help them get a job."

One ever-present way of bringing a real working environmentatmosphere to Cass students is to insist that all coursework is donein groups, frequently placing students with peers they don't reallyknow, and who come from another part of the world.

These skills are also shooting up the agenda of course designersat Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) Business School, whichruns undergraduate and postgraduate courses in a range of specificbusiness areas, including marketing, HR, creative advertising andinternet retailing.

"We are working hard to improve developing employability skills,particularly via internships with real businesses," says Dr MaryMeldrum, head of postgraduate programmes at MMU, "and our approachis always to combine the practical with the theoretical. Forexample, on the MA in international public relations, students haveto devise a media campaign and do a real project with what's calleda 'live client'."

And Kieran Maguire, who lectures on accounting and finance atMMU, says the days are gone when university could be considered apurely mind-expanding experience. Employment prospects have toassume central importance. "We're in the process of re-organisingour course to ensure that employability is embedded in every unit,"he says. "We have to ensure that our students' IT skills are highquality, which means can they move from presenting on a spreadsheetto verbal presentations."

In addition, a large number of assessments in the business schoolhave an element of group work, with each member of the group takingon a real role that exists in the real workplace.

"Some of the students don't like this in the first place," saysMaguire, "because they realise that in a team you have shirkers andyou have workers, and they feel that, because they're being assessedas a group, their marks might be dragged down by the shirkers. Butwhen they get outside university, they realise that this happens inreal life too and that it is an important skill to have to be ableto work with people like this and not let it affect your businessperformance."

At the University of Plymouth's Business School, allundergraduate and postgraduate programmes are shaped with a keen eyeon the CBI's graduate-skills framework, which highlights keyemployability skills, including communication, application of IT,numeracy and literacy, team working and business awareness. For theschool's associate dean, Hilary Duckett, presentation skills areparticularly important: "We use every opportunity we can to engagestudents' presentation skills in a real setting. We find that itgalvanises their capabilities when they have to make presentationsto real clients."

And, given the increasing competition among universities for fee-bearing students, Duckett concedes that stressing the employabilitycredentials of courses is essential these days.

"This has always been relevant for business school, but now it isincreasingly important, and it is part of the sell to potentialstudents."

I LEARNT SOME QUICK LESSONS IN OFFICE ETIQUETTE

Thomas McKenna, 24, works for the management consultancyDunnhumby, having last year completed a business MSc, branded as theManchester Masters, at Manchester Metropolitan University.

"The course is based on real business experience, rather thantextbook learning, and apart from spending two or three days in alecture theatre right at the start of the course, the whole year isspent out on placement with real firms, with the business-schooltutor coming out to see you there.

There are four three-month placements, each one in a slightlydifferent business role. My first was working on a marketingstrategy at a company looking into setting up a Manchester lottery.Then I went to a property developer, working on a communicationsstrategy to reach consumers. Third was with a design agency lookingat how they could use social media more effectively. And finally Iwent to a PR agency, where my placement had an HR focus, coming upwith the ideal recruitment and training process to reduce staffturnover.

In that one year, I learnt more than I had done in four years ofmy undergraduate course. The thing I got out of my Masters year mostwas the art of networking: how to talk to people, how to flex yourstyle according to who you are talking to; when to try to presentsomething and when to listen; and I also learnt some quick lessonsin office etiquette. These things seem straightforward, but untilyou can implement something in a real setting, you don't reallylearn it."

MY WORKPLACE SKILLS WERE DEVELOPED BY MY COURSE PLACEMENT

Abbie Thomas, 23, is an HR advisor at the Vauxhall van plant inLuton, a job she went into after finishing a four-year sandwichcourse BA in business studies at the University of Plymouth BusinessSchool.

"Helping us pick up general employability skills was a massivepriority for the university, which is why they gave us so muchsupport. They stressed that you needed real life experience if youwanted to get a job. In the second year, building up to ourplacements, we had careers lectures in CV skills and interviewtechniques, and we had sessions talking to the students who'd justreturned from their placements .But the main thing that helped medevelop the workplace skills was the placement itself, which for mewas in an HR role at Hays Recruitment in Bath. The nature of thatposition meant I had to do lots of cold calling, make sales pitchesand hold business meetings, which is a difficult situation for anundergraduate to be put in, but it means you have to developconfidence, and I'm really grateful now that I had to do it.

I couldn't have imagined looking for a job without that on my CV.In our final year, when we returned from our placements, ourlecturers used to bring in external speakers from businesses to talkto us about the workplace skills that employers look for. I rememberthat happened particularly on the module I did on organisationalleadership."

YOU MUST BE PROACTIVE IN SEEKING OUT EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS

Thomas Lynch, 29, last year completed a one-year MBA at theUniversity of Leicester School of Management, a course he undertookafter a 10-year career in the Royal Navy as a radio communicationstechnician.

"The university laid on lots of courses and workshops thataddressed general employability skills, such as how to write CVs andhow to behave in interview situations. I also remember attending anevent called Tomorrow's Managers, where the university got inrepresentatives from some of the biggest names in business. This wasa skills workshop where we worked in groups - like a mini Apprenticeprogramme - for two days, and always with a representative from oneof the companies overseeing us.

I went to as many of these events and workshops as I could,despite the fact that I was also working for a local engineeringfirm as well as putting in 25 hours a week on the MBA. However, Inoticed that lots of my fellow MBA students, and lots of the otherstudents eligible to attend these events, did not bother doing so. Ithink whatever programmes universities lay on in the employabilityskills area, it is still up to the students to be proactive and toshow desire to be employed in as many ways as possible. For example,the job I am now in is with a company that came along to theuniversity for a recruitment event that was very poorly attended. Iwas one of only two people there. And now, two years on, havingworked elsewhere, I am in this job."