Employability skills are those skills necessary for getting, keeping
and being successful in a job. These are the skills and attitudes that
enable employees to get along with their colleagues, to make critical
decisions, solve problems, develop respect, and ultimately become strong
ambassadors for the organisations (Sodipo, 2014). These skills (soft)
are usually lacking in graduates that are just out of school and even
those already in employment. Organisations spend a lot of time and money
training staff, not only in job-specific areas but also in general and
basic skills. In time of high unemployment as in the nation presently,
employers have more choices of applicants and will often favour those
with well–rounded employability skills. Such skills according to Skills
You Need (2013) include:
(i) interpersonal skills - these are used
to interact with people, participate effectively as members of a team,
negotiate, satisfy customers, make decisions, manage time and work
effectively with colleagues;
(ii) communication skills - these
consist of ability to write clearly and succinctly, to demonstrate good
vocabulary and listen actively;
(iii) critical thinking skills -
refer to ability to solve problems and make decisions. These are huge
assets to employers. They include ability to effectively plan and
organize creative thinking, innovative and inventive ways of doing
things that add value to the work environment;
(iv) personal
development - this is having the right attitude towards work and the
organisations where you work. Employers look for people who are open to
learning and embrace change. Such a person will be more successful than
the person who is afraid of learning and resistant to changes in the
organisations;
(v) self-management skills - refer to
self-motivation, self-confidence and self-control skills that are used
to manage personal feelings and how people react to challenges and
problems both at work and in their private lives;
(vi)
presentation skills - these are skills needed for presenting information
clearly and effectively in the workplace. These include business plans,
reports and minutes.
(vii) leadership skill: this is the ability to influence others towards the achievement of a goal;
(viii)
numeracy: involves understanding of numerical data, statistics and
graphs. It is also a part of making decisions and reasoning and
(ix)
IT skills: Acquiring basic IT skills and being familiar with the
computer open a wide range of employment opportunities and increase
marketability in workplaces (Skills You Need, 2013:33).
Classification of Skills
Employability skills are basically classified into two. These are core and soft skills.
Core
Skills: are known as hard or technical skills. Hard skills are
associated with specific technical abilities or solid factual knowledge
required to do a job. These skills can be termed as “what you knowâ€
(Hunt, 2007). Hard skills are the technical skills including programming
languages, operating system skills, networks and communications
(Snyder, Rupp & Thornton, 2006). Hard skills include the specific
knowledge and abilities required for success in a job. Hard skills are
teachable abilities that can be defined and measured. Hard skills are
easy to prove with certificates, education degree, awards and so on.
Pardy
Group (2012) described core skills as “Discipline related†or “Content
specific†skills. They are the technical skills necessary for success in
the workplace such as Pharmacy skills, Biology skills, Architecture
skills, Computer skills, Math skills, Therapeutic skills, Teaching
skills, Graphic design skills and so on. Hard skills are often learned
in schools and from books. A nursing student learns how to give a shot
to a patient, an architect learns to draw building plans, a therapist
learns how to counsel patients.
Hard skills are often consistent
regardless of which company you work for, what circumstances you may be
in, or who you work with. They may be easy to observe, quantify, and
measure. Typically, there is a direct path as to how one would excel at
each hard skill. A person may take accounting courses, then take
advanced accounting courses, then work to get experience, then take an
exam to become a CPA (Pardy Group, 2012).
