Employability Skills Workshop Session Plan

Slide Number & Title Activity Timings Resources Required

Slide 1 – Employability Skills Workshop Holding slide while people arrive Training powerpoint

Slide 2 - Introductions Trainers introduce themselvesAttendees introduce themselves using a speed networking format or similar

5mins20mins (will be less if less people)

Slide 3 – Today’s Objectives Go through objectives 5minsSlide 4 – What are employability skills? Talk through definition

Ask the attendees to brainstorm what attributes/skills they think relate to employability

5mins15mins

Slide 5 – Employability skills are Show them the list of employability skills and discuss any differences, do they know what each of the skills are (see briefing sheet on entrepreneurship if needed)Play the Skills Game – split them into groups of 3 or 4 and get them to match attributes (resourcefulness, friendly, focused etc) to each skill and then come up with an example of how they could demonstrate each skill.NB It is not essential that they match them up correctly this game is more about getting them familiar with these terms and discussing how they could illustrate having them

10mins

20mins Skills game

Slide 6 – Why do you need them? Talk about the research done by the CBI which suggests that employers rate employability skills as the most important thing they are looking for. In the current climate illustrating what skills you have is even more important

5mins

This activity was undertaken as a part of the National HE STEM Programme, via the South West Spoke. For more information on South West Spoke projects, please see www.hestem-sw.org.uk For more information on the overall national programme, please see www.hestem.ac.uk

Employability Skills Workshop Session Plan

Slide 7 – But often potential applicants don’t have them

Again this graph is from the CBI report and illustrates that applicants either don’t have employability skills or more likely don’t demonstrate they properly in interviews

5mins

Slide 8 – Skills that Employers want and how they can be developed

Ask participants to complete the Employability Skills Audit worksheet. Run through the worksheet as a group identifying each skill and discuss how they can be linked to the student ambassador role.

5mins Employability Skills Audit worksheets

Slide 9 – Job Applications Talk through what employers are looking at when going through job applications. The importance of having a CV, responding to advertisements, good covering letters.

5 mins

Slide 10 – Airbus Application Click on the Airbus picture - this should take you to their online application forms. Divide the participants into 5 groups and ask each group to consider each of the attributes listed on the Airbus “value and behaviours” section. Ask each group to consider the type of questions an employer may ask when seeking information on each attribute. In turn, ask each group to act as an employer and ask the questions to the other participants. Explore the type of information the employer would like to elicit.

Pick out key words that show the importance of employability skills.Hand out a job application to each group and ask them to identify where in the application it asks for them to evidence subject specific knowledge and then employability skills. Brainstorm as a group how they might answer those employability skills questionsNB it is good to have a mix of graduate online applications and

5mins

10mins

Access to the internet

Sample job applications

This activity was undertaken as a part of the National HE STEM Programme, via the South West Spoke. For more information on South West Spoke projects, please see www.hestem-sw.org.uk For more information on the overall national programme, please see www.hestem.ac.uk

Employability Skills Workshop Session Plan

the more traditional CV and covering letter applications

Consider the job application process including the content of a CV and covering letter. Look over the covering letter suggestion and discuss the type of content that should be included in the covering letter.

Sample covering letter

Slide 11 – How can being a student volunteer help acquire employability skills?

Highlight that the greater variety of volunteering activities they do the more opportunities they will have to acquire and develop these skills

10mins

Slide 12 – What can STEM Ambassadors do?

Run through the examples listed on this slide as potential ways of gaining further experience and enhancing employability skills.

5 mins

Slide 13 - Next Steps Talk through next steps and hand out evaluation sheets 10mins Evaluation sheets

Enhancing the Employability of STEM Student Ambassadors - resources by Enhancing the Employability of STEM Student Ambassadors project is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

This activity was undertaken as a part of the National HE STEM Programme, via the South West Spoke. For more information on South West Spoke projects, please see www.hestem-sw.org.uk For more information on the overall national programme, please see www.hestem.ac.uk