Assessing your skills, talents and attributes is an essential part of Personal Development Planning. It is essential that you know where your strengths and weaknesses lie and how they fit with employers’ requirements so that you can plan to enhance your employability. After completing each exercise you may want to print it out and add it to your personal planning portfolio.
Identifying Key Skills in the Workplace
In 2005/6 over 315,985 people graduated from first degrees in the UK. This figure is set to rise. 172,060 of these graduates had first or upper second class degrees, (source: HESA) Therefore to compete, for jobs, against all these other graduates, academic achievement isn’t enough.
Graduate employers look for more than academic ability, they want to know about your skills. Take a look at these three job adverts for graduates. What skills are they asking for? (Run your pointer over the words you think are important, they will change colour if you are correct).
Example 1: NHS Management Graduate Training Scheme
Example 2: PriceWaterhouse Cooper Graduate Training Schemes
Example 3: LDJ Design and Display Ltd: Display Specialist
