Graduate

Looking Beyond Employability

I found this tucked away near the end of an article in the Independent on Sunday:

“Students should learn not how to win arguments but how to ask subversive questions of authority, assess evidence and find the truth. They should discover how to critique the paradigms within which others expect us to live.”

That may sound trouble-making. Revolutionary, even. But that would be missing the point.

The important thing to think of here is ‘critical thinking’. About having access to and understanding of the tools that will enable you to do things. What you subsequently decide to do is then up to you.

photo by Dr.Fitz

“I’ve been looking everywhere to find employability skills…” (photo by Dr.Fitz)

So how can you be expected to ‘find the truth’? What if it’s not that simple?

Good questions. Things are never that simple. But neither question should stop you seeking out truth and question what is in front of you.

Critical thinking and employability skills bear many similarities. Engineering consultancy, Atkins, has called for universities to help students develop their employability skills:

“When considering whether to go to university, students would be wise to research where skills shortages lie in the marketplace and do a degree which is more likely to lead to a job offer.”

This view may help students and employers service needs right now, but it doesn’t cover possible future needs. Many jobs will be available in a decade or two that aren’t currently in existence. The skills shortage in that respect is a complete unknown.

To really achieve at employability, you need to look past employability in isolation. So how can you move forward without feeling completely in the dark?

A joint NUS and CBI guide to employability skills has been released to help with that. “Working Towards Your Future” is a short guide for students to get an idea of the general qualities employers are looking for in a graduate.

Aaron Porter, NUS president, said:

“A greater understanding of employability will enable today’s students to develop themselves, make a contribution and fulfil their potential tomorrow.”

You aren’t treading along an educational production line. You are participating in higher education. While you should expect your university to have the right types of access and tools in place for you to succeed, you should also feel a personal responsibility by acting with your own future in mind.

That doesn’t mean you’re only at university to enhance your career. Perhaps, like myself, you went into higher education because you wanted to find out more about a subject. An inquisitive mind is all it takes and you can be hooked.

Higher education can lead to a successful future and it can open many doors, but the fact it can lead to those things does not make it the reason behind higher education. Think of your life as a journey of lifelong learning and your skillset can be used beyond the ’employability’ tag.

Nevertheless, it would be daft to ignore students who attend university in the hope of brighter career prospects. Employability skills shouldn’t be an afterthought, but an integral part of your overall learning. By truly furthering your thoughts, considering other views, researching complex situations, opening up your mind, and imagining possibilities while you study, your employability should improve hugely. No matter how you define ’employability’.

While none of this happens automatically, university is one place where a lot of this is at hand to reach out and grab. So when something isn’t working out satisfactorily, or even if it’s just slightly out of your reach, don’t just sit back and grumble. Ask questions, assess evidence, and find the truth!

The answer is unanswerable

You need answers. The solution, you may think, is to look for answers. After all, you need them.

Or do you?

An ‘answer’ is like finding a solution, or developing a set of guaranteed instructions. Your search for the answer is usually a search for step by step detail to get from one place to another.

However, it’s hard to find answers when there are only possibilities. A to B is hardly ever restricted to a single route. Worse still, the route is constantly changing.

photo by Crystal Writer
photo by Crystal Writer

When nothing simple presents itself, the search is often intensified. But you’re just spending more time on a fruitless exercise. Rather than attempt to beat the game, expand your vision beyond objectives. With trillions of ever-moving variables, it’s easier to temper chaos, rather than control it.

For too long, qualifications have been seen as the route to bigger and better things. But it should only be one aspect of a wider aim:

“…anything less than top grades has become tantamount to failure. This leaves little room for experimentation, creativity, or mistakes. Inquisitive learning that is driven by an interest in knowledge and learning for its own sake is squeezed out by consumer-driven demand for acquisitive learning. It involves learning what is necessary to pass examinations or motivated by a need to impress employers with one’s range of extracurricular activities and achievements. It is based on a model of individual rational calculation where the wider purpose of learning has been lost.” [p145 – The Global Auction]

You shouldn’t simply stop studying. I’ve mentioned before that qualifications are still a useful part of the bigger picture when you know why you’re working toward them. I’ve also explained why it’s crucial to make mistakes.

But you’ll never get true, unarguable answers.

Searching for progress and new discoveries should still be undertaken. The search should never stop.

Forget answers. Your search should be a more open-ended type of enquiry. It’s okay to be vague. Not everything requires an absolute, drilled-down focus to the last speck of detail.

You do need a basic plan of some kind (but it’s flexible), you do need awareness of the general direction you’re trying to take (but it’s bound to change), and you do need conviction in what you’re doing (but that doesn’t mean you’re unmovable & stubborn).

This works for smaller goals, not just grand plans. Writing an essay, for instance, usually involves a search for different views and arguments, proving that there’s no absolute answer. Yet you reach your own conclusion and demonstrate your own results.

If certainty and clear answers ruled the world, higher learning wouldn’t be as important as it is today. Learning can solve problems, but only when it sets out to improve and discover, not when it sets out to staunchly answer.

Qualifications: Shaping, Not Dictating

Will a master’s get you a job?

The simple answer is: no, it won’t. But, as a piece in The Guardian says, “students are still heaping their dreams on them”.

Before you get too engrossed in that dream, wake up for a minute and remember what gets you a job:

YOU will get you a job. A degree helps to shape you, a master’s helps to shape you, any qualification helps to shape you. Your choices make a difference, but they don’t automatically get you a job.

That’s not to say that unemployment is solely the fault of an individual. Everything impacts upon your plans, which is why qualifications make a difference. Your achievements help shape the future, rather than dictate it.

photo by Quercusivo

If everyone held the same degree, how else would you stand out? (photo by Quercusivo)

What about big plans? The Independent questioned who gets the head start in life when comparing someone who went to uni and someone who went straight into employment.

In isolation, it doesn’t make sense to ask who had a head start. Neither had a head start based on the choice, even though it’s a big choice to make.

Life is complicated and each person’s life is unique. The most successful person in the world may have been more successful if they had made different decisions. But we’ll never know. What happens happens.

You can’t make the most of your lot by going to university with no good purpose, or without making considerations about the path you’re taking. Yes, you may still make good use of your time and end up with a great job soon after graduation, but that doesn’t mean uni was the best choice and it doesn’t mean you had a better head start than someone else.

All this talk of best choices and comparing one thing to another will keep going forever more. But it misses the point. Bypass this conversation and make your own plans clear. A confident view will guide you toward making the right choices.

Once you get serious about your plans and you still decide a masters degree is the way to go, The Guardian has updated their guide to postgraduate courses this month. As with any league table, it can only serve as a guide. But when you’re making plans, it all helps.

Will you make the best choice every time? Obviously not. But the odds are stacked in your favour when you ditch the general and get more specific.

Standing out and finding success

When the economy is in trouble and the job market isn’t brilliant, a standard choice for many is to stay in education (or return to it) and take a higher qualification.

Getting another shiny new piece of paper that sets you above the rest seems like a good idea.

But how distinctive is it really?

photo by Mike Bailey-Gates

photo by Mike Bailey-Gates

BBC’s Director of the North, Peter Salmon, spoke to students at Edge Hill University recently about opportunities and finding success.  He said something that may lead you to question why another qualification isn’t necessarily enough to truly make you stand out:

“You have to be able to develop your own voice and make yourself distinctive and ask yourself how far you’re prepared to go to make it.”

The sentence may appear quite vague and difficult to achieve, but there’s a deeper point here.  Another BBC employee, the head of editorial development, Pete Clifton, said to Salford students:

“When somebody like me looks at job applications, I’ve got to come up with a way of distinguishing between people. One of those ways is if they’ve got a link to what they’ve done. If I can go away and look at it and see it’s good quality then they’re probably going to have a chance.

“This is why you should think about ways in which to showcase what you do.”

What makes you tick? Where have you made a difference? What can you show off right now?

The main point here is that you can start being distinctive right now.  You don’t need to wait for someone to give you a green light and permission to shine. And you don’t always need to rely on another qualification just to look better on paper.

If you want to do more study, great!  If you simply want to use that study as a gateway to distinction, start thinking about the other gateways out there.  There are more than you think.

Qualifications support your quest for future success.  But you are the driver.  How far are you prepared to go to make it?