Graduate

How to identify your transferable skills (and why they’re so important)

SIR – As a mathematician, I would like to share a numerical insight.

I always remind colleagues on an interview panel that the only significant numbers on an academic certificate are those pertaining to the date.

This would be funnier if it didn’t make an uncomfortable — albeit generalised and not entirely reasonable — point.

photo by Let Ideas Compete

In the ever-changing realm of higher education, the year in which you graduate can lead employers to assume many things. Things that won’t always be accurate.

Clearly, you need to combat these assumptions. You also need to stand out amongst the sea of graduates that wash in to the jobs market each year. Because the number of graduates out there doesn’t matter compared to the range of skills you hold. Many people rarely show their skills off, selling themselves as individuals.

Transferable skills are the accomplishments and understandings you have developed in various situations that can be used in many other situations.

“A comprehensive definition [of transferable skills] was provided by the former Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) in which transferable skills were defined as those skills that are central to occupational competence in all sectors and at all levels (DfEE, 1997), and include project management, leadership, communication, working in teams and problem solving.” [Source]

Transferable skills go beyond what you learn in a formal context. Everything you do has the potential to help you gain and develop transferable skills. Examples include:

Presentation – Clear communication to others, visual representation of concepts, passing knowledge over to others clearly.
Computer / Social Networking – Adept with technology, communicative, involved.
Administration / Organisation – Prioritisation, maintaining control, strong time management.
Literacy / Writing – Make points clearly, argue with reason, persuade and convince, communicate information to a range of people.
Evaluation / Critical Thinking – Provide solutions, take a broad perspective, confidently engage with concepts.
Information Gathering / Research – Quickly uncover what’s important, know where to go and how to find information, able to assess a broad selection of ideas.
Numeracy / Economic / Monetary – Mathematical solutions, data processing, interpret/produce/explain statistics.
People / Groups / Teamwork – Communication, empathy, dealing with others, open both to debate and collaborate.
Customer Service – Helping others, calm under pressure, public facing, listening to others.
Management / Past Responsibility – Delegate, set up projects, deal with difficult situations.
Communication / Verbal / Explanation – Discuss clearly, deal with wide range of people, put concepts across competently.

The above list is a vague start to all the competencies you may have and/or may need. You may see a list of skills required in a job advert and feel you don’t have many of them. But you may be more able than you think. You may already have — or be close to having — all sorts of skills without realising.

Now is the time to identify your future from your past. Consider your achievements, however minor, and give yourself credit where it’s due.

For a start, don’t simply highlight past roles and describe jobs. In order to shine, you should highlight your achievements.

By highlighting your transferable skills, you’re creating an identity for yourself. According to Hinchliffe & Jolly, there is “a four-stranded concept of identity that comprises value, intellect, social engagement and performance”. When looking to show off your skills, consider the four strands with these questions:

Value = What can you bring to the role/company?
Intellect = How academically prepared are you to take on the responsibility?
Social engagement = How involved are you already, why are you doing this, and what potential links can you bring with you?
Performance = To what extent can you maintain progress, continue to improve and enhance, and deliver what is required?

Get as much as you can down on paper so you can see exactly where you stand. Leicester has a useful SWOT analysis document you can download so you can start identifying your skills, employment goals, and the potential weaknesses you need to address.

photo by 姒儿喵喵

Once you start uncovering these transferable skills, relate them to opportunities. Identify what each employer is looking for and tailor applications so you’re getting the right points across each time. For even more help on what you can demonstrate with key transferable skills, Cambridge explains further via their Skills Portal.

You may not yet be able to identify what you are passionate about in a career context, but you can still get a sense of what is important to you and how you meet particular criteria. I’ve sold myself short at times in the past and it’s usually down to a lack of preparation or misjudgement, not embarrassed modesty.

But it’s important you don’t sell yourself short. Universities can’t guarantee you a clear path to a job after you graduate. Even if “employability is a performative function of universities” (Boden & Nedeva), a broad brush idea of employability for all graduates cannot work in reality. The term ’employability’ is subjective, as is the term ‘transferable skills’ . To be employable does not mean to hold a rigid set of qualities and achievements. Not for the employee and not for the employer.

In which case, should universities teach students how to find a job? Is it important for your institution to give you the tools to go out into the world with the confidence to find employment with ease?

With marketisation of higher education looking to grow and as students are labelled even more as customers, one expectation will be to make each new graduate ready for the employment market. Prokou states that “the special emphasis on employability is strongly associated with the emergence of the ‘market-driven’ or ‘pragmatic’ university”.

In the circumstances, there is an increasing trend in supplying students with ‘corporate skills‘ while they study, in preparation for when they graduate. Even arts and humanities subjects will cover certain business ground to help boost transferable skills to the workplace.

Newell Hampson-Jones explains that arts and humanities already cover important skills that can be transferred to the workplace, even when they’re not flagged as such:

“My degree taught me to analyse and look for unique perspectives of situations. I understood how to communicate, how to understand and analyse what stakeholders I work with need from me. Most useful of all, my study has helped me understand how to adapt to and thrive in different situations, working cultures and job roles.”

Should you view your degree as nothing more than a further step toward a possible career? Before you do, consider the possible limitations. Politics lecturer, Neil Davenport, argues:

“Education is not a process of spreading transferable skills to the next generations. Students are not automatons who can be programmed with the requisite skills for a working life. In developing young people’s minds, a rounded education should give them the ability to pick up skills that they need when they need them and to work out problems both intellectually and practically.”

Nevertheless, more students attend university in order to increase employability and to gain transferable skills. As Nicolescu and Păun suggest:

“Obtaining employment after graduation is conditioned by having the abilities employers need and ask for. And in some instances, the ability of an institution to ensure employability has become an indicator of institutional quality (Maharasoa & Hay, 2001).”

So how do transferable skills fare? Is a general set of skills the best way to stretch you further as you progress past graduation? Or should you be more specifically trained up? Are you a lifelong learner, or are you learning a lifelong trade?

In most cases now, general transferable skills are more relevant to employers, even when you study toward a specific vocational degree:

“Employers want adaptive recruits, people who can rapidly fit into the workplace culture, work in teams, exhibit interpersonal skills, communicate well, take on responsibility, perform efficiently and effectively, they want adaptable people, people who can use their abilities and skills to make the organization evolve through bright ideas and persuading colleagues to adopt new approaches and they want transformative employees, people who can anticipate and lead change, who have higher level skills, such as analysis, critique, synthesis, etc. (Woodley & Brennan, 2000).” [Source]

Transferable skills are, therefore, a big deal. Even if you’re only at uni to learn, you will develop all manner of abilities and extend your skillset for the better.

Even if some employers really do think the only significant numbers on your degree are those pertaining to date, your ability to showcase your transferable skills will give employers the real story of what you gained in higher education.

Providing information, advice and guidance to students

My previous post asked if you were taking too many study risks.

Arthur made a great point in the comments:

“The focus on your education should be increasing your capabilities, not getting through a series of assessment tasks. If you bought a car that did not have wheels, you would feel ripped off. So why buy an education without capabilities?”

No matter how aware you are of increasing capabilities, how can universities help you increase them further in a changing world?

image by rild

Yesterday, Aaron Porter, President of NUS, spoke about the type of information, advice and guidance students need in order to develop talent and make the most of their time at university. Speaking at the Graduate Talent conference on Innovation and Skills for Competitiveness, he gave a similar analogy to Arthur’s.

Porter said that if you buy a bike and the chain falls off after five minutes, you’d get a refund because the goods are faulty. While he understood the massive difference between high street transactions and entering higher education, he still saw the need for an increasing recognition of how students perceive HE and the need for those students to have the right tools throughout their education.

That, he explained, is why information, advice and guidance needs to be properly targeted at the point of application, and that individuals are made aware of the differences in curriculum and community in different institutions.

You may be in the position to assess risk in terms of study, but what about ongoing? What can a university do to help you minimise risks after you graduate? And how can they help you minimise risks in terms of what you study and how you use your time at uni?

Porter covered a lot of ground in today’s talk and made a number of important points. Here are the main details covered in his talk:

Students will begin to change the way they engage with institutions. More students will actively ask “What can I do to guarantee employment?”
So much information is available, but it’s hard to navigate through it all. How can the relevant information be provided to students in an easy to digest fashion?
Student background makes a difference in how easily individuals can navigate information. Must address a diverse community, so nobody is left behind or left wanting.
League tables are used to choose where to study, but not always with real understanding of what those tables mean & how to see the big differences between institutions.
Students won’t dust down a strategic report on what employers want from graduates. As good as the advice may be, there is still a need to put the detail forward in a way that students *will* access it.
How often during induction are students actually asked what the purpose of HE is, told how it is different to what learning has come before, and asked what they personally want out of HE? Helping students to focus on these critical issues will make a huge difference to their experience and understanding. Ask critical questions at the start to earlier allow students to prepare better.
Need to think about better integrating employability and careers into curriculum and teaching. Students now expect this, so let’s deliver.
Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) needs rolling out quickly to make a level playing field for students. Beef up academic achievement and its detail, while also highlighting achievement outside the classroom.
Drawing out this information through HEAR will help graduates articulate their achievements and skills. In turn, job applications can be better targeted by graduates, as they can sell themselves more accurately.
All students should feel able to participate in extra-curricular activities, whatever their background.
Work exp. & internships need to become almost an entitlement, especially with fees about to climb.
Way in which we communicate information needs to be more innovative in terms of social media. On campus and off campus, are institutions operating in the same environments as students? Careers information is perfect territory to take on social media, because it’s not likely to be seen as a personal intrusion.
National measure of employment needs to go beyond a 6-month view. 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, etc. Students need to know, because education costs are growing and employability is a big deal.
There is a danger that learning for its own sake may be lost. Could be an adverse impact on which skills students learn before graduation.
Browne didn’t crack the problem of getting an entirely flexible HE system. The opportunity was there, but hasn’t been addressed. We must, therefore, still think about how we can address the issues. This is critical in allowing students to get the employment skills they need.

A new cap or a new price?

The government today responded to the Browne review recommendations. A few brief details on government proposals:

A rise in the tuition fee cap up to a possible £9,000 (including a lower cap of £6,000);
higher interest rates on loans, up to 3% above inflation;
students pay back once they earn above £21,000;
slightly higher maintenance grant for students from families earning below £25,000;
Introduction of £150m ‘National Scholarships Programme’;
greater loan support for part-time students.

For greater detail, Times Higher Education have put together the main detail in the proposals. There will be a lot more discussion throughout the week across the media, that’s for sure. Then there’s the small matter of a demo in London on November 10…

Just after the majority of teaching funding was slashed by the government, universities are going to have to find a lot of money from elsewhere. So it’s unlikely that institutions will want to charge less than £9,000 if possible. As with many capping exercises of the past, expect to see the cap become the price. Chances are that £9,000 will become a standard figure, with £6,000 being charged by any universities that cannot work toward the extra agreements. Whether or not you agree with a full marketisation of higher education in a cap-less system, it’s hard to see a variable rate up to £6,000 or £9,000 do more than push the standard price up across all institutions.

This situation is clearly one in which the financial burden will be placed on students. Those in favour of these changes are keen to say that it is graduates, not students, who will pay back the debt. These graduates are still the same individuals, regardless of what you call them. Students don’t pay up front at the moment, so the government is not proposing any type of revolutionary change.

Today’s proposals appear to be more of an offsetting exercise in regard to government debts. People won’t be saddled with credit card or mortgage style debts, but neither are they faced with that under today’s system.

Graduates will likely pay back more over 30 years. The lower debt we currently have, coupled with a cut off of 25 years, is not much different to a higher debt and a cut off of 30 years. The only real difference is the amount of time many individuals spend paying money back. Some call this a stealth tax. Some say that NUS and other opponents to fee hikes are scaring potential students unnecessarily.

Yet these proposals will make an impact. And alternative measures have been offered. For example, NUS released a blueprint outlining a graduate tax long before the Browne review was announced. That graduate tax was essentially ignored. The type of graduate tax dismissed in the Browne report was a basic, pure graduate tax; not the one offered by NUS.

For all the discussion going on today and all the debate within government, today’s proposals are not all that different to what is currently on offer. Yes, graduates won’t find themselves having to pay scary amounts every month once they’re earning over £21,000, but those payments will go on for much longer than they do today, because:

The fees will be higher;
The interest rate will be higher than inflation;
The cut off before remaining debt is written off will go up from 25 years to 30 years.

Some complaints regarding the graduate tax offered by NUS suggested that many graduates would have to pay back more than they do now.

However, at a time when fees are set to potentially treble, that argument cannot work. There are pros and cons to everything. Despite mentioning NUS recommendations, I’m not suggesting any particular solution here. My main issue is that people are not being listened to.

And while debate rolls on regarding the future of HE, it’s difficult for anyone to sensibly debate the issues because the goal posts keep being changed. Is it any wonder so many people are angry at Liberal Democrat moves to support higher fees when every single Lib Dem MP signed the NUS pledge that they would not support those very proposals?

Situations change and decisions do need to be updated based on new developments. However, much of the situation was known when those pledges were signed and many alternatives had been proposed, including by Lib Dems themselves.

With an almost total cut in government funding for university teaching, much higher fees will not provide universities with extra income. Those fees will also, therefore, result in no change to the student experience. The individual is set to pay more for the same and, quite possibly, more for less.

It is, therefore, no surprise that so many students, academics, parents, and other individuals are unhappy with what’s happening in higher education right now.

As things stand, I imagine there will be a considerable turn out in London on November 10. Mario Creatura recently said:

“I’m concerned that the decision to protest has been built on a foundation of emotive language gleaned from activists and the headlines which were ultimately based on Browne’s recommendation rather than what the coalition has actually said.”

Now the coalition has spoken. Creatura was worried that the London demo may protest too many issues and cover too much ground. But I feel this shows the magnitude of what is happening.

The Conservatives have been fond of saying “We’re in this together”, so why can’t people covering all aspects of higher education say the same thing? The issues may be plenty and cover a large proportion of HE, but that’s exactly the reason why solidarity is necessary more than ever.

Far from diluting the noise, a collective effort may be exactly what’s needed to point out why the situation must be taken more seriously and with greater focus on the bigger picture.

The government wants students to have more of a say in what’s important to them regarding higher education. I couldn’t agree more. It’s time to speak up.

What will be the future of education?

Lord Browne’s Independent Review of HE Funding and Student Finance is due tomorrow. If reports on the content of the review are to be believed, students are not going to be happy.

As students across the country prepare to march in London on 10 November 2010, I’d like to share some quotations with you that I spotted recently.

First up, on what education has become:

“There is no denying that education is an essential preparation for life and work in an advanced economy. Modern economies require skilled and motivated workers, who can only profit from the opportunities they afford if they are equipped to respond to their demands. So much is now received wisdom.

“But a large part of the problem with education is that this connection has become too direct. Aristotle said that we educated ourselves so that we can make noble use of our leisure; this is a view directly opposed to the contemporary belief that we educated ourselves in order to get a job. To that extent the contemporary view distorts the purpose of schooling, by aiming not at the development of individuals as ends in themselves, but as instruments in the economic process.”

A.C. Grayling, The Meaning of Things (2001)

The connection between education and economy comes even closer, showing no signs of stopping:

“…universities in need of funds had little choice but to accept corporate money. As social status and career success correlated ever more closely with service to profit-making entities, many academics were willing to play along. A Labour Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, channelled the spirit of the age when he claimed that the idea of education for its own sake was ‘a little bit dodgy’; students, he insisted, needed ‘a relationship with the workplace’. This insistence that market values can be applied to education continues to inform both policy and rhetoric. In November 2009 the irrepressible Peter Mandelson was promising a ‘consumer revolution’ in higher education.”

Dan Hind, The Return of the Public (2010)

The Browne Review is expected to recommend a continuation of this ‘consumer revolution’ by suggesting higher fees, a real rate of interest on loans, and the possible lifting of the fee cap altogether. Universities must, therefore, ask (and answer) crucial questions on student matters:

“What is the value we add for each and every student above the basic cost of paying the staff who teach them and providing the core facilities that they have to have? We should be able to answer this question anyway, irrespective of whether the substitution of private for public funding of teaching goes through, and whether or not the cap on student fees is set at £5,000, £7,000 or more than £10,000. Being able to account for our premium will be essential both to setting the prices of our qualifications in the future, and to remaining competitive in a rather different world.”

Prof. Martin Hall (Vice Chancellor at Salford)

The BBC has a load of links with information on the future of universities and fees, but that detail and speculation cannot answer the question as posed by Professor Hall. Each university will need to have an individual response based on their own position and qualities.

While this rolls along, the ‘student as consumer’ problem looms. The Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) published a series of documents on “Rethinking the values of higher education” in 2009, looking beyond the simplistic and misleading ‘consumer’ tag:

Whatever the Browne Review concludes, and however students are perceived, we still have to see whether the coalition government will be in a position to feasibly implement the recommendations. If the key recommendations are as expected, I’m not sure they can.

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