The following ‘hints and tips’ may be of interest to any graduate looking to apply for their first job post-university. 

We’ve all seen the maxim: no job because no experience; no experience because no job.

But whoever created that maxim clearly didn’t think about transferable skills.

Transferable skills are the abilities and competencies that accompany you with every career transition. You developed a great range throughout university that are highly sought-after by employers.

Here are the most desirable transferable skills you have gained throughout your degree that can help you throughout the job application process.

Writing and Communication

As emojis, Snapchat and Instagram stories become a preferred way of speaking, 44% of hiring managers feel that a solid writing ability is lacking in many new recruits.

However, as a recent graduate, you have writing and communication skills in abundance.

Not only have you spent the last few years refining your language to hit that 2,000-word word count, you’re familiar with spelling and grammar basics and can write both formally and colloquially, too.

Employers don’t want the next Shakespeare; they want someone who can write efficiently, clearly and concisely via reports or emails, for example. Therefore, highlight your writing proficiency on your CV to show you’re a master of communication.

Teamwork

All employers expect their staff to be team players, regardless of whether they prefer to work independently or not. And this applies to all roles and industries.

Throughout your studies, you will have worked in a team, perhaps in a seminar task or in a society, for example.

Group tasks also develop a range of other skills such as active listening, collaboration and cooperation, commitment, negotiation and a positive attitude, which all employers seek in new hires.

When listing teamwork as a skill on your CV, make sure you explain how you obtained skills and precisely and concisely as possible, rather than what your team did collectively.

Presenting

The majority of professionals will present at some point throughout their career.

While it’s more common in client-facing sectors, such as sales, it’s also an increasingly common part of the interview process when you reach management level.

Even if you didn’t give a full-blown presentation during your degree, you will have exercised your communication skills by speaking up in lectures, seminars and workshops.

When discussing your presentation skills in the job application process, don’t limit yourself to being able to communicate effectively and channel nervous energy into confidence and enthusiasm. Remember that there was plenty of planning, preparation and organisation involved too. Present yourself as a well-rounded candidate.

Project Management

The ability to manage your time and workload effectively is imperative in the workplace. You will have your own tasks to take care of, but you will also be part of wider projects, sometimes spanning various departments and plenty of people.

And you don’t want to be the one that drops the ball.

As a graduate, you’re no stranger to the concept of project management after the tight ship you ran to meet coursework and exam deadlines. Explain to employers how you’re organised your resources and prioritised your time to achieve the best results possible. Also, delve into the obstacles and issues you faced and how you overcame them to prove that you’re a problem solver too.

Research and Critical Thinking

Like any course, the purpose of a degree is to understand and explore the subject matter in more detail. As a result, you’re a pro in the art of research and critical thinking – which are in-demand assets amongst the workplace.

The process involves thinking about abstract concepts and sources, evaluating them and then forming conclusions and making decisions. As a result, critical thinkers can present coherent reasoning around projects and proposals.

While you may have been a critical thinker when writing essays, professionals do the same every day, such as when planning a marketing campaign.

Therefore, draw on your critical thinking skills in your job applications and interviews, discussing how you evaluated, reasoned and made decisions throughout your studies and can bring this skill to the workplace.

The nature of coaching is that it is a two-way process involving coach and client as equals; the more active a part you take in the process the better the outcomes are likely to be for you. Here are 15 practical ideas and suggestions to help you get the most from your coaching.

1. Remember it’s not the coach’s responsibility to solve your problems or achieve your goals for you 

The coach is there to support, challenge, listen, stimulate, encourage, share feedback and offer anything else they have in their tool kit to help you think better and plan well to make the changes that are important to you. Ultimately you are the one that has responsibility for your own work and life. This is why we encourage a model of active, adult-adult partnership in coaching rather than anything that suggests you are dependent on your coach.

2. It’s up to you to ask your coach to change the way they are coaching you if you feel they could coach you in a better way

Coaches are of course only human, and as such have their own distinct personalities: yet a good coach will be able to flex their style in many ways to suit you, e.g. by being more or less direct/challenging, by moving at a faster/slower pace or by sharing more or less of their thinking and ideas with you. They will be happy for you to make such requests because their aim is to coach as effectively as possible.

3. The coach’s job is to ask you for even more than you might normally ask of yourself

Your coach wants the best for you and for this reason will be looking to offer and encourage ‘stretch’ wherever possible. Your coach may well question the limits you set for yourself and encourage the setting of challenging goals and targets. Coaching should not be a ‘cosy club.’

4. The coach is your success partner, not an accountability service

Coaching will work best for you when you are actively seeking to get the best from yourself and when you take responsibility for your own growth and development.

5. The value of coaching isn’t based on how much time is spent coaching

The value of coaching depends on quality rather than quantity: when both you and your coach are fully engaged in the task and working hard then success should follow – it is a bit like going to the gym and really working at it, rather than thinking you will get results just by being there.

6. The coaching session in itself is not what gets you results

Ultimately this is down to what you do and how you act after the coaching – what you put into practice. Coaching is there to help you to plan and prepare to get the best out of what you are doing.

7. Talk about what matters most to you

You are not there to conform to any expectation you feel your coach may have on you – least of all are you there to please the coach in any way. Yours is the only agenda that counts and if it is important to you, your coach will work on it with you.

8. Focus on yourself

Sometimes clients worry that coaching is somewhat self-indulgent – even a selfish luxury. We offer the view that you can only effectively do your job or serve others well if you are yourself fulfilled, purposeful and operating to your fullest potential. When you succeed, others should benefit too: if you are unhappy, unfulfilled or frustrated in your work or blocked in some other way it is likely that others will not get the best from you. You can look at your coaching as a positive boost to the communities of which you are a part.

9. Be open to seeing things differently

Very frequently, the issues you face are not in themselves the real issues! Often it is the way we see issues and how we think about them that needs to change. Even when some of the issues we face are objectively daunting or difficult challenges, we can use coaching to open ourselves up to new ways of responding to them. Opening your thinking up will open up new possibilities for choice. Your coach can help you identify ways of seeing, thinking and responding that may offer you very different options and approaches.

10. You can develop and evolve with coaching

Coaching is both a developmental process and an evolutionary one. It helps clients accomplish more with less effort – the developmental aspect – and can also lead to different thinking and possibilities for growth and change – which we call evolving. Evolving is a skill worth building because life itself is about evolving, not just developing.

11. Use your coaching to help you think about – and design – the kinds of environments and systems you want to work in – you can go beyond yourself

We can all exercise some choice and responsibility in creating the kind of environment to allow ourselves to flourish. Even when your organisation places apparent restrictions in your way we can often exercise at least some discretion in the physical, social, professional and cultural contexts in which we work and live. Coaching encourages a whole-system approach and links personal change to the contexts we inhabit.

12. Take charge

You are invited to take charge of the coaching process, to get it focused on what you most want and need. We encourage you to come to each session with a direction in mind, perhaps a list of issues or questions you want to address. Ultimately the more you know what you want out of your coaching the better. Your coach can then work with you to craft really specific and relevant goals for the coaching.

13. Be Real – say what you think

When what we say does not reflect what we are really thinking, we are incongruent. Coaching is not an abstract exercise or an intellectual joust but an opportunity to work together with your coach in a climate of shared honesty and truth. When you are authentic it really helps to get the best out of your coach.

14. Promise what you can deliver

Whilst we encourage stretch and boldness in coaching we also ask you to be mindful of what is realist and doable in the context of everything you are trying to do. Overextension causes great anxiety, guilt and suffering. We encourage you to remain mindful of what you are realistically able to take on as a result of your coaching.

15. Share what you are doing with your coaching

People close to you will see and feel the effect your coaching is having, either directly or indirectly. For some people this will create questions and even anxieties about the changes you are making. We would suggest that where possible you are open to others about what you are trying to do via your coaching. This will have the double benefit of including them and reaffirming your commitment to developing as a person and a leader.

Produced by The Canadian Career Development Foundation, this workbook has pages of questionnaires, activities and templates that you may be able to use or adapt to use with your own clients.

Career Decision-Making Workbook

Working in partnership, Burberry and Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership have brought together a creative industries toolkit.

The aim of which is to equip educators with resources, inspiration, pathways, employers and ideas to inspire young people from all backgrounds to make better informed choices.

They hope you find this toolkit useful for encouraging classroom discussion, lesson planning, PHSE, pastoral care, helping your students choose their options or giving careers advice.

Click on inspire, teach or promote to access the toolkit.

Have a look at the brand new NCW 2020 pre-mag.

Advance warning, it is about 8 MB so might take a minute to download.

Download Here

Whether your client is just starting out in their career, or ready to make a career change, career assessments can be a helpful tool to spark ideas and identify strengths. Here are eight free career assessments to help get you started.  

Charity Village Career Assessment Questionnaire  

This multidimensional assessment offers guiding questions for clients around job/career satisfaction, career path/options, attitude/motivation and the role of their family in career change/job search. It also offers definitions for terminology used in the assessment, which could be helpful for clients who are using it independently. 

Motivational Appraisal Personal Potential (MAPP) Career Assessment 

The MAPP test comprises 71 questions exploring likes and dislikes and is meant to be done quickly, taking approximately 22 minutes to complete. Users must register to take the free sample assessment. Paid packages are also available, which offer different assessments and career matching opportunities.  Read more

The two activities might be of value when working with clients who need help to kickstart their careers.

CAREER MANAGEMENT – SWOT

This activity will help individuals think about their careers by doing a SWOT analysis of their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Once they are fully aware of all these influencing issues/factors they will be better equipped to develop their careers.

 CAREER MANAGEMENT QUESTIONNAIRE 

This simple, twelve-point questionnaire is designed to help individuals analyse how well they are managing their career development and identify the areas they need to work on. 

Commitment, expertise and time is needed for successful safeguarding

Even with the best academic outcomes, when safeguarding arrangements aren’t judged to be effective it’s likely to lead to an inadequate leadership and management judgement.

The significance of online safety within this bigger picture cannot be under-estimated, given that young people are living their lives seamlessly on and offline. Digital behaviour in schools has to be monitored in the way physical behaviour and conduct is monitored: staff can be trained to look for the early warning signs of a young person at risk in the physical environment – but who’s looking at student behaviour in the digital environment, where they spend so much time? And who is trained to recognise the markers of risky behaviour?

In a special digital safeguarding report, the team at eSafe has identified the 7 defining habits of the leadership teams in those establishments with outstanding safeguarding arrangements.

Click Here To Download The Full Report