How to capture evidence of skills

As you progress through your degree you will hear people talk of the skills you are gaining and how important they are to future employment, particularly in the application process.

Having identified key skills you need to think about showing evidence of  the skill and how  it can be shown to a potential employer.

So how can you do this and  how much do you need to drill down?

Our advice would be to make the evidence your provide as specific as you possibly can.

For example if we take communication skills (pretty much needed by all jobs) then how can you show you have this skill?

Communication can be divided up between written and oral.

So let’s look at each one in turn.

Think of…

Examples of written communication can be report writing , essays, blogs and emails. If you extend this to a work setting have you for example got to write a daily report on what you have achieved or any issues you encountered .  Have you written letters or any health and safety reports for example?

Tell the reader about it and make it come to life…what did you do specifically and what did this involve?

If oral communication is a skill you want to show then presenting to a group is a good example. So can you say what you were presenting? What was the purpose? On your own or with others and who to? How long was it? How was feedback given? Did they ask questions?

You can also list more than one example under a heading.

So other skills…

Problem solving can be shown by breaking a problem down into smaller chunks and resolving it, perhaps with the help of others or alone.

Teamwork. You can talk about many were in the group and how you successfully managed to do something. Or if there were difficulties how were these resolved?

Being aware of the skills you have and how you can prove you have these to someone else is really important in the career  planning process.

Less obvious ones might be creative thinking, flexibility, reflection and evaluation.

And then there’s Project Management, Self Management, Information Analysis …

For more on this go to our website

https://www.brighton.ac.uk/careers/looking-for-a-job/right-career/graduate-toolkit/index.aspx

 Robin Hutton via Compfight