Looking for the top 10 employability skills to help you get a job? While a lot of skills are specific to the job role you are interested in, there are plenty of skills that carry over between different jobs. These are useful no matter what your job duties are and they can really help boost employability. Here is our list of the top skills to have, as well as advice on how to highlight them on your CV, cover letter, or job application.
- What are employability skills?
- Top 10 employability skills
- Why are employability skills important?
- How to include employability skills in your CV
- To sum up
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What are employability skills?
Employability skills are general knowledge and aptitude that can be used in any role in any field. In other words, these are transferable skills that will serve you well throughout your entire working life, and even into hobbies and your social life as well. These skills will make sure that whatever your job is, you approach it in the right way and help with the general smooth workflow of the company you work in. They can also be very useful if you are aiming for progression in a company, as a lot of these skills are very important to managerial roles.
A lot of employability skills are classed as soft skills and are to do with how you approach tasks, think through problems or work with others. Nonetheless, these skills can be trained and learned. There are a lot of courses, workshops and books that teach people how to grow these abilities.
Top 10 employability skills
So, what are the top 10 employability skills? This employability skills report by the Chartered Management Institute shows the top skills and competencies that employers want to see on people's CVs. These are skills that consider the digital workplace and the ways that people can show they are likely to excel at their tasks. The top 10 skills are:
1. Team working
Team working is how well you work with others. This includes building positive working relationships, as well as being a team player and properly allocating and elevating tasks. It also means making sure that you update other team members on your progress so that everyone knows if there is an issue arising.
How to develop team working skills
You can help develop teamwork ability by getting involved with any kind of group or team project. This can range from joining a sports team to taking part in a community organisation that plans local events. You can even grow your teamwork skills with cooperative games, escape rooms, and other fun team activities.
How to demonstrate team working skills at a job interview
The important thing about showing teamwork skills is to emphasise how the group worked together, as well as how successful the team was as a whole. Taking credit for the team's success can make it appear that you are more interested in your own progress rather than being part of a team. Don't forget to discuss your role in the team though.\
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2. Critical thinking & problem-solving skills
This is the ability to evaluate and analyse information in order to gain insight or get a plan. This is useful for helping make thorough plans that will ensure projects and ideas are fully realised. This can be useful for everything from working through unexpected logistics problems in a shop to analysing the validity of data sets.
How to develop critical thinking & problem-solving skills
Critical thinking can seem intimidating to practice, but it is simple if you break it down. The things to practice include active listening skills to make sure that you get all the necessary information, as well as breaking down a problem into multiple steps. You can do this with the help of puzzles and hypothetical problems to work through, such as crisis management games.
How to demonstrate critical thinking & problem-solving skills at a job interview
The best way to show your problem-solving skills is to look at an example that shows when you were faced with a problem and had to make a solution. These will often be short or medium-term things rather than longer-lasting issues, as this shows how you can apply your critical thinking skills while on a tight timeframe.
3. Communication skills
This includes verbal and written communication with other people in the company, clients, customers, suppliers, partners and more. You need to be able to tailor your message to the audience and situation. All your communications should be clear and concise and you need to learn to balance having a professional tone with being personable and friendly.
How to develop communication skills
The best way to build on your communication skills is with practice. You should aim to become more comfortable with talking or writing to people in all kinds of situations. You should also look at examples of different writing styles and speech styles and take note of how people communicate with you. There are also plenty of courses you can take on improving your communication.
How to demonstrate communication skills at a job interview
Your CV and cover letter should have already shown off your good written communication skills. Make sure that your verbal communication in the interview is clear and easy to understand. Practice your answers beforehand to make sure that you do not fumble over words. If you need examples of communication in past jobs or education, be sure to think of different cases for internal and external communications.
4. Self-management
Self-management is vital for being able to complete tasks and deliver good work without needing supervision. This is vital for companies as it frees up managers to handle more important tasks. This includes time management, self-assessment of progress, and knowing when to seek out help if you need it.
How to develop self-management skills
it can be intimidating to try to build on your self-management skills, but the best way is to take it slowly. Take on more responsibilities where you can, and make sure that you plan out your time properly. You can also try doing freelance work or a personal project. Keep to deadlines and properly assess how you are going to see what needs work.
How to demonstrate self-management skills at a job interview
You can demonstrate these skills by talking about projects or times when you have been left to manage yourself. This can be at work, in your studies, or perhaps a project you did for a competition or a campaign for your own business.
5. Flexibility & adaptability
This means being able to quickly adjust to new problems or situations that come up. This can help you take on new unexpected duties at work, deal with customers and clients with different needs, and handle complex and hectic workplaces.
How to develop flexibility & adaptability skills
Unfortunately, it can be hard to adjust to change as we can't always guarantee how that change will come up. However, you can help to prepare yourself by becoming more familiar with what you would do if an unexpected situation arises. The best thing to do is to keep a level head, assess the situation, and start planning a way to deal with it.
How to demonstrate flexibility & adaptability skills at a job interview
Your range of work and educational history will show some of your flexibility. You should highlight any roles you have had where things changed frequently or where you have had to deal with unexpected circumstances.
6. Initiative & self-direction
Whatever stage you are at in your career, having initiative is important as it can help you push forward and want to improve things for both yourself and your company. This means making smart decisions and working under your own steam to get things done.
How to develop initiative & self-direction skills
You can work on building your initiative and self-direction by having a clear plan of what you want to achieve in your career. You can also look at learning to better analyse situations and see good ways to proceed.
How to demonstrate initiative & self-direction skills at a job interview
Highlight your initiative by talking about how you have gone above and beyond to help a company, or if you started a hobby group, project or other activity on your own merit. This can also be how you have approached a project with minimal instruction.
7. Digital skills
Digital skills are vital in a lot of fields since so much of the world uses technology. Basic tech skills such as the use of consumer applications, word processing, making slideshows and using websites are expected skills for most jobs.
How to develop digital skills
There are a lot of courses that can help with basic and intermediate digital skills. Some of these courses are run for free at local libraries or colleges. You can also build your skills by using digital programs as practice.
How to demonstrate digital skills at a job interview
You can simply talk about what digital skills you have and give examples of what you have done before. It's also worth asking what kind of digital programs the company will expect you to learn and you can discuss other similar tools you have used in the past.
8. Resilience
Resilience means keeping going even after setbacks, such as unexpected problems or negative feedback. This is important as a lot of bad situations come up, but we have to make sure they do not interrupt workflow too significantly.
How to develop resilience skills
Resilience is mostly gained by facing setbacks and working through them, but you can prepare for this by working on stress management, with techniques such as meditation and other ways to keep yourself focused. You can also learn resilience when trying to complete complex tasks where you are expected to fail at first.
How to demonstrate resilience skills at a job interview
Make it clear when you have used your resilience in previous jobs or education. Maybe a brief got changed or you had a bad interaction with a customer—these are great examples of resilience.
9. Emotional intelligence
This means being in touch with your emotions and those around you, from co-workers to clients. This helps make sure that work environments are healthy and can progress without disagreements or misunderstandings.
How to develop emotional intelligence skills
A good way to improve your emotional intelligence is to get used to listening to people more closely, as most people will discuss things that are upsetting them. You can also learn more about body language to help you understand what someone is expressing.
How to demonstrate emotional intelligence skills at a job interview
While there's rarely a single example of emotional intelligence that you can display, speak kindly of people throughout your interview and show that you understand people's emotional needs when discussing past workplaces or a typical day in the job you are interviewing for.
10. Innovation & creativity
Innovation is important to help things move forward and to make sure that companies keep growing. This means thinking outside the box and coming up with new ways to do things.
How to develop innovation & creativity skills
Read books, magazines, blogs and websites for ideas and never shut down new ideas just because they are different.
How to demonstrate innovation & creativity skills at a job interview
If you have an example of a time when you innovated and presented a new idea to your previous manager, this is a great time to bring it up. Be sure to talk about how your innovation helped.
More relevant employability skills
Want to really make your CV stand out? Here are more examples of employability skills:
- Entrepreneurial skills
- Leadership skills
- Organisational skills
- Patience
- Perseverance
- Confidence
- Numeracy
- Cultural awareness
- Ability to work under pressure
- Integrity and accountability
Why are employability skills important?
As you can see, employability skills can be used in any field and will help you work better with others, manage your time and be more productive. There is a misconception that these soft skills are less important than hard skills such as technical qualifications or specialist knowledge, but this is not true. Soft skills are so highly valued because they can help in any job role.
Employers value these skills because they make sure that their workers are able to handle their tasks without too much direct management. This means that building on these skills can help instantly make you a more attractive employee and more likely to get a job.
These skills will also help with almost anything else you want to do in life. From studies to personal projects, skills such as resilience and self-management can help make sure that you succeed.
If you're not sure what you want to do, don't worry. Our Career Path Test matches you with roles and sectors that are in line with your values and interests.
How to include employability skills in your CV
When you are looking at how to write a CV, it's important to think about how to include your skills in a way that clearly and easily shows the employer what you can do. This includes:
- Have a skills section to list both hard and soft skills that you have. Having your skills in a bullet-pointed list or a table is a great way for employers to see them at a glance. For some less common skills, you might want to briefly mention why they are useful.
- In your employment section and education sections, be sure to include information about what skills you gained from specific jobs or courses. This can help give your abilities a real-life setting and help employers see details about what you know and how you gained your competencies. It's especially important to do this if you have part-time or volunteering jobs where you might think they have rather routine tasks. Focusing on the employability skills you gained can help make a very bland part of your CV really show your strengths.
- If you have to write a cover letter to go alongside your CV, you can also include your employability skills in this. Try to focus on a few main skills which will be most useful for the job rather than overloading your cover letter though.
To sum up
Employability skills are sometimes called soft skills or transferable skills. These skills make you more employable in almost any industry or role and they are some of the key skills employers look for.
Some of the top employability skills are teamwork, problem-solving and communication. These are all important for working well with others with minimal supervision, so they are vital to career skills.
While it can be harder to train than hard skills, there are still plenty of ways to build your employability skills, such as courses and workshops.
It's important to make sure your employability skills are prominently displayed on your CV in the skill section and mentioned where relevant in your employment and education history.
Get interview-ready with our guide on the best way to prepare for an interview. Remind yourself of the skills you have and land that next exciting job!
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