Employability (management philosophy)

Employability describes the skills and characteristics of getting a job and remaining employable. It is the ability to transfer what one has learned into stable employment. In the higher education system, there can be a disconnect where students earn a degree yet have difficulty obtaining employment in a career of choice. In response to these challenges, universities have created curricula emphasizing transferable skills. Partnerships between universities and businesses are becoming more common as businesses seek more employees who are better prepared to enter the workplace.

Employability is a relatively new, subjective concept. Experts have debated the factors that contribute to employability and how higher education can assist students with becoming employable. There is an emphasis on transferable skills and the need for graduates to be more self-reliant and focused on lifelong learning. In the twenty-first century, job candidates must be flexible and prepared for many changes and challenges in the workplace.

Background

The term "employability" can refer to different things in different contexts. A good definition of employability is the range of varying skills and accomplishments that any employer is looking for in candidates that will serve as a foundation for technical knowledge and skills for a particular position. These can also be termed "transferable skills," which are skills easily applied to different careers. Transferable skills can be grouped into the following categories: applied knowledge, personal skills, interpersonal skills, and workplace skills. Employability is important because it maximizes a person’s chances of getting the job they want. In addition to helping one land a job, employability allows for continued professional growth and the opportunity to seek new job opportunities.

There are practical ways students, graduates, and job seekers can maximize employability. They can start by exploring opportunities in college courses and extracurricular activities, internships, and training programs to develop skills that will be useful in many different jobs and industries. The next step is to demonstrate skills to obtain employment. Graduates must master how to show potential employers their skills through resume writing and job applications, face-to-face interviews, and assessments. Standing out and getting an employer's attention is key to graduates getting the job they seek. Graduates must know how to carry out tasks professionally at their jobs. The third step is applying these skills in the workplace. Specific workplace skills will vary by occupation.

It is important to note that developing employability skills at any stage is possible. The opportunity to improve these skills applies throughout a person’s career. Graduates will likely change jobs several times throughout their lifetime. Developing employability skills applies to students, graduates, and job seekers of all ages and backgrounds.

Overview

In the contemporary workplace, graduates must be flexible and prepared for change throughout their careers. A lifetime of personal development and ongoing training will likely be necessary to succeed in the twenty-first-century marketplace. A degree is not an immediate passport to a graduate-level position, and graduates may not directly utilize the content of their degree curriculum during employment. Existing work trends reveal that higher education graduates are expected to immediately integrate into tasks and office culture upon entering the workplace. The window of spending months learning the ropes no longer exists in many office environments. Permanence is no longer a feature of the corporate structure. Some careers have disappeared entirely while new technologies have emerged. Jobs that did not exist in the 1990s have been created as new industries have emerged. Examples of new technologies that have created new, never-before-seen jobs are software engineering and information technology.

Employers seek candidates with "transferable skills" that enable them to be proactive and respond to challenges creatively and independently. Some commonly listed employability skills are professionalism, initiative, teamwork, problem-solving, application of information technology, communication, basic business understanding, and customer awareness, as well as applied knowledge of reading, writing, mathematics, or science. There is a need for candidates to have the following skills:

• People skills, including small group work, communication using various approaches, and respect for diversity
• Personal skills, including dependability, adaptation, and ethical behavior
• Workplace skills, such as time management and task prioritization
• Information technology aptitudes such as working in the digital world and data retrieval, evaluation, analysis, and synthesis from a range of sources
• Applied knowledge, including critical thinking, which varies by specific field

Some employers and employability specialists question the practice of pigeonholing graduates by their degree subject and argue that they should instead be able to consider a wide variety of careers. For instance, students who study chemistry may end up in teaching, industry, or healthcare. Further, the consensus is that employers want graduates who are better prepared and who, when hired, can quickly adjust to workplace culture and be immediately productive. Students are asking to be trained for employment; many want internships, co-ops, and job placements. Research shows a need for programs that do a better job matching graduates with employers.

There are approaches at collaboration between higher education and business that have worked. One example is the joint curriculum design between the British Medical Association (BMA) and the University of London. Another is a Sheffield Business School and Nestlé collaboration that allows students to study part-time for a specialized degree while working full-time for the company. Additional examples include Starbucks, which partnered with Arizona State University to create a specialized degree in retail management, and the Collaborative Leaders in Academia and Business, a collaboration between universities and companies in Maryland and Virginia that worked with students to increase digital skills. Participants in the program included Georgetown University, American University, Johns Hopkins University, Capital One, Exelon, and JPMorgan Chase.

Employability is not solely dependent on receiving a degree or higher education. It is a combination of skills, attributes, knowledge, and experiences that make someone attractive to employers, and these can also be obtained through vocational training, apprenticeships, and on-the-job learning.

Bibliography

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