What are Employers looking for?
Employers seek a range of skills and qualities from applicants. These are often referred to as transferable or employability skills. Those that are most often sought are listed below:
- Communication: Ability to communicate orally, in writing, or via computer/electronic means.
- Career-related work experiences: Hands on experiences that can be applied to the position such as a part-time job, an internships, cooperative education assignment, etc.
- Team work: Working well with others in order to achieve a common objective.
- Leadership: Being able to motivate and encourage others, when taking the lead.
- Decision making: Identifying options, evaluating them, and then choosing the most appropriate.
- Problem solving: Thinking things through in a logical way in order to determine key issues. Creative thinking is useful.
- Flexibility/Adaptability: Ability to handle change and adapt to new situations.
- Self-awareness: Knowing your strengths and skills and having the confidence to put these across.
- IT Literacy: Automation and increased utilization of computer technologies are required for almost every job in the field of business.
- Commitment/Motivation: Having energy and enthusiasm in pursuing projects.
- Interpersonal skills: Ability to relate well to others and to establish good working relationships.
- Numeracy: Competence and understanding of numerical data, statistics and graphs.
- Priority/Time Management: Being able to decide priorities for achieving targets.
Additionally, employers like to see that applicants have some general business awareness – having an insight into what is happening in industry or commerce and the impact this could have on the organization.