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Develop your employability
Developing your employability starts from day one at university. There are many things you can do to make yourself more employable and lots of help is available to support you during your time at the University of Bath.
This page:
- What is employability?
- Valuing your degree
- Top skills and attitudes employers look for
- Developing you CV and the Bath Award
- Other useful pages
What is employability?
- It’s a set of achievements, skills, attitudes and personal attributes that make you more likely to be employed and to stay employed
- It’s something you build on and develop at University through your studies, work experience and extra-curricular activities
- It’s something to work at throughout your career so you can grow and develop and hopefully achieve the level of success you want
- It’s something you need to be able to market about yourself to potential employers.
For further guidance check out our Journey to work DVD streamed online.
Valuing your degree
- Acquiring subject knowledge is important but so are the other skills you learn from the study of your subject
- Think about the way you study your subject and whether this has taught you any of the key skills employers look for (see below)
- Make sure you know and can articulate the key skills your subject has taught you in your CV and at interview
- Remain focused on the reasons you enjoy your subject and what skills you are developing, even if you don’t want to use your subject knowledge in your career.
You will have many options open to you after graduation. Take a look at our Choose a career webpages.
Top skills and attitudes employers look for
You will find yourself developing many transferable skills while at University. Here are some of the skill top graduate recruiters look for:
- Teamwork, communication, customer care, emotional intelligence
- Problem solving, creativity, enterprise, commercial awareness
- Leadership, time management, IT and digital literacy skills.
Make sure you can demonstrate them in applications and interviews. Check out these short videos from PwC about how you can demonstrate the key skills they look for.
These are some of the attitudes you need to demonstrate which can persuade an employer you are the right fit for them:
- Passion, energy, can-do approach, flexibility, resilience
- Self-reliance, respect for others, focus on personal development.
Developing your CV and the Bath Award
- Take advantage of the many University clubs, societies and volunteering activities on offer and develop those all-important employability skills
- Keep a record of what you have done so when you apply for jobs you don’t forget your achievements and the skills you’ve gained. Personal Development Planning (PDP) can be a useful tool to do this
- The Bath Award enables you to reflect on and get formal recognition for your activities against key skills employers look for.
You can also take part in skills events run by the Careers Advisory Service and the Students’ Union.
Other useful pages
- Make youself aware of placements, short internships, part-time jobs, voluntary work, short courses, insight days or work shadowing - Get work experience
- Be clear about what's important to you in a job; know your strengths, interests, skills and vaules, and what you have to offer an employer - Choose a career
- You'll also need to know the appropriate job-search strategy for your chosen career - Find a graduate job
- The Careers team are the experts and have a wealth of knowledge on how to get through the recruitment process from applications and interviews to aptitude tests and assessment centres - Succeed in the selection process.