EMPLOYABILITY AND SELF DEVELOPMENT (4UESD)

CHAPTER 1
CONCEPT OF EMPLOYABILITY
INTRODUCTION
What is Employability?
Employability is the ability to find and keep a job. It's a combination of skills, knowledge, and personal
attributes that help people be successful in their careers.
Higher Education Authority provides a definition of employability as “a set of achievements – skills,
understandings and personal attributes – that makes graduates more likely to gain employment and be
successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the
economy.”
McKenzie and Wurzburgh (1997) stated that “lifelong employability is the capacity to be productive and
to hold rewarding jobs during a working life, and to be equipped with up-to-date skills and
competences”.
Brown, Hesketh, and Williams (2003) define employability as “the relative chance of acquiring and
maintaining different kinds of employment”.
What does Employability Include?
 Initial employment: The ability to get a first job
 Job maintenance: The ability to keep a job
 Job transition: The ability to adapt to new job requirements
 Re-employment: The ability to find a new job if needed
What Factors Affect Employability?
 Knowledge: What you know
 Skills (generic and technical): What you do with what you know
 Attitudes: How you approach things
 Qualifications: Papers that support your claim of meeting job requirements
 Experience: Your abilities drawn from past similar works
 Personal circumstances: Your life situation
 Labor market environment: The job market you're looking in
How to improve employability?
 Get career advice
 Develop your skills
 Learn about the world of work
 Be proactive about managing your career
 Be creative
 Have good communication skills
Employability is important because it helps people stay competitive in the job market.
EXPLAIN THE CONCEPT OF EMPLOYABILITY, AND ITS RELEVANCE AND VALUE TO BOTH
EMPLOYING ORGANISATIONS AND INDIVIDUALS.
To be employable, one need to understand what employers look for in a person before they employ them.
For example, a person needs soft skills like:
 Commercial awareness
 ‘Can-do’ attitude
 Skills
 Behaviours
These soft skills are important because:
 They help in enabling people to quickly become part of an effective team and add value to the
organisation.
 They enable staff to make a positive contribution to the organisation from an early stage
 They work as part of various teams that are likely to be cross-functional in nature
 They contribute more effectively over time as they recognize how the skills they have, and the
additional skills that they are willing to develop, can benefit the organisation
As globalization and technology increase:
 Job security decreases
 Employee market increases
 People need to employ several sills over their life time.
Elements of Employability
 Number of interpersonal skills and behaviours
 Individual fruitfulness of skill base
 Individual flexibility in handling several work engagements
Employability Skills
These are non-technical skills that enable employees to do the job effectively. Some of such skills are:
 Transferable (cross-functional) skills
 Increased productivity (added value)
 Flexibility and adaptability
Lesson 1.1: Employability skills demanded by employers
The employability skills that are most frequently desired by employers are:
Check a Case Study on Page 10 of Study Guide and do activity 3 on page 11
Lesson 1.2: Selection Criteria in the Changing Workplace
Introduction
Employers use selection criteria to rank and determine which candidate should be chosen for a job post.
However, if we were to compare the selection criteria today with that used even ten years ago there would
be a noticeable difference. The changing workplace has increased demand for flexible skills which can
withstand economic, social and political pressures. Whereas job experience and qualifications would have
stood you in good stead in the past, in today’s job market selection criteria is weighted in favour of
interpersonal and behavioural competencies.
Employability skills add value to your technical skills. Remember employability skills we have already
discussed above. Such skills helps employers differentiate between people with similar qualifications and
experience during the recruitment process. Employability skills are unique to each individual, thus
competition on such matters is rare. It is important to meet the requirements of the job by having hard
skills like:
 Necessary qualifications
 Experience
  Skills
To your hard skill, you need to add soft skills like:
 Good work ethics
 Responsibility
 Reliability
 Honesty
 Enthusiasm
These help to make you an attractive prospective employee for any employer. As for you, employability
skills will:
 Open up new opportunities for you to achieve employment
 Develop your career
 Progress earning potential
 Help you in making the move into more highly skilled work.

Activity 4: Comparing you with you

Compare your employability skills from 12 months ago with the employability skills you possess today.
Put yourself in the position of a recruiter. What is it about your current employability skills that would
make you a better selection choice than in the past? Why?
Value of employability skills to employers
 Things are done right the first time
Employability skills help an employee to be proactive, effective and efficient at the same time. This helps
an organisation to achieve its objectives through people it has employed. Employability skills will also
help in cross-functional activities as they make employees flexible to do various activities at work.

Check the case study on page 14 of the study guide (CASE StuDy: rubbiSh in, rubbiSh out)
  Employees have organisation ownership and accountability

Employers need individuals who are willing to be answerable for their decisions. We all have the power
to make choices that either contribute to the success of the business or lead to failure. Sometimes these
choices are unintentional but taking ownership of our actions and decisions is important in building trust
with our manager and colleagues.

 Employees use initiative within boundaries

The ability to show initiative and assess what opportunities there are to take actions within the boundaries
of your job role or allocated task enables you to demonstrate additional value to your employer. Although
your job description will cover many of the requirements of your job, it cannot cover every eventuality.
Understanding what additional tasks or activities you can take part in will be seen as resourcefulness and
demonstrates that you will contribute to business success.

 Innovation and creativity

As an employee you will be expected to contribute to developing innovative and creative products and
services to improve customer satisfaction. Whether you develop a new method of doing a task, which
makes a process more efficient, or help develop an idea, which leads to a new product or service it is
creativity, which is the lifeblood of continuous organisational success.

 Flexibility

Transferable skills can be used in different roles and project teams, contributing to the individual
effectiveness. The changing business environment means that organisations must be able to flex and
change. If an individual is to remain employable, they must be able to move to where their skills and
experience will be of greatest value to the organisation.

 Responding to changing market and customer needs

A key feature in a competitive marketplace is that the organisation is responsive to changing market and
customer needs and secures repeat business. Being responsive to these competitive pressures requires
employees to have transferable skills in order to avoid their skillset becoming redundant, or their
organisation’s products or services becoming obsolete.

 Creating loyalty and commitment

A sense of employee contribution and value creates loyalty and commitment, and; reduces staff absence
and turnover. By improving your employability skills, you will become more successful in your role, and
experience personal fulfilment and personal satisfaction from a job well done. As you experience more
success you will feel greater levels of engagement; research shows that the more engaged you are, the less
you will miss work compared to those of your colleagues who are disengaged.
Value of employability skills to individuals
Employability skills are an important ingredient to helping you feel good about work. Therefore, having
the right skills can:
 Increase your capacity to contribute to the delivery of your organisation’s goals
  Increase the sense of achievement you draw from work
 Improve your job performance and satisfaction
 Renew your commitment to the job
 Make you more employable

CHAPTER SUMMARY
Employability is a set of interpersonal skills and behaviours which provide employers with a flexible and
adaptable workforce and contribute to an individual maintaining a productive career throughout their
lifetime. These skills are valued by employers over and above qualifications and experience for several
reasons: they are transferable, enabling the individual to use them cross functionally; they increase
productivity, adding value to the organisation; they also provide the employer with an agile workforce.
This contributes to flexibility and adaptability of the human resources within the organisation.
The employability skills more desired by employers include: self-management, thinking and problem
solving, working together and communicating, understanding the business and functional skills.
Employers value employability skills because they have relevance in the shifting selection criteria for new
staff because of changes in the modern workplace. Being able to demonstrate employability skills enables
the employer to differentiate between people with similar qualifications and/or experience and deliver a
culture of doing things right first time.
Finally, the individual themselves benefits from the employability skills virtuous circle as they contribute
to improved job performance, job satisfaction and commitment. Furthermore, they help the individual
become more employable, increasing opportunities for progression and promotion.
END OF CHAPTER 1