Employability Skills

Employability skills are a set of broad, transferable abilities that will help you contribute effectively and successfully in the workplace, regardless of your chosen industry or discipline, or your eventual role. 

They’re highly valued by employers, and you can be sure they’ll look for evidence of them when hiring. Below are the key employability skills you’ll need to develop, along with some handy tips on how to go about it.

Many of these employability skills are also graduate attributes which are embedded in your courses. Read your course learning outcomes to understand how you develop these skills through your studies.

Use our online to assess your employability skills and access a variety of online skill development courses.

  • Creative and critical thinking

    Creativity is the capacity to act and build from the imagination. Another useful way to think of it is the process of conceiving your own, original solutions to problems, or ways of achieving objectives.

    It’s naturally associated with artistic pursuits, and is well recognised in architecture, trade work and all forms of design. But in truth, creativity can be applied in all professions and aspects of life. At its core, it’s a mindset.

    Critical thinking—the ability to analyse ideas, information and situations to form an independent judgement—is creativity’s perfect match. It enables you to consider the products of your creativity, or your colleagues’, and make a sound, reasoned decision about whether, and how, to proceed.

    All our degrees foster this ability. But you would be wise not to rely on study alone. You should actively develop your critical thinking skills throughout your life and apply them daily.

    Complement your creativity with critical thinking and you’ll not only be able to offer your employers plenty of original ideas, but help them identify the right ones to follow.

  • Problem-solving

    The outcome of many situations in professional (and personal) life depend on the ability to think critically about issues and come up with proactive solutions.

    Strength in problem-solving comes from:

    • taking both rational and creative approaches to a problem.
    • clearly defining an issue before identifying and implementing a solution.
    • the ability to foresee and evaluate likely outcomes.
    • considering the ‘big picture’ and assessing many points of view.

    Throughout your studies you will be developing your problem-solving skills in every course that you take. Your degree will help you become an effective problem-solver, able to apply critical, creative and evidence-based thinking to conceive innovative responses to future challenges.

    To develop your problem-solving skills you could also try:

    • participating in industry projects throughout your degree.
    • taking a risk management course.

  • Teamwork

    Working in teams is an integral part of everyday life in the modern workforce. Throughout your degree you’ll get plenty of exposure to teamwork, but you’ll a