Top employability skills for getting a job

Want to know the top skills needed for a job? While some are specific to certain roles, plenty apply to all jobs. Lots of skills are useful whatever your job duties are and it’s these attributes that’ll help boost employability.

Here’s our guide to the top employability skills, why they matter and how to highlight them on your CV.

We’ll cover:

• What are employability skills?
• Top employability skills
• Why are they important?
• How to include them on your CV

Employability skills are the abilities you’ll use in any role in any industry. In other words, they’re the transferable skills that’ll serve you well throughout your life – in work and beyond.

Having employability skills means you’ll thrive whatever your job is. They’ll be useful if you’ve got your eye on a promotion, as they’re essential in managerial roles.

Most employability skills are soft skills that affect how you approach tasks, think through problems and work with others. “But what if I don’t have these soft skills?” Don’t fret. Just like hard skills, it’s possible to learn new soft skills. There are courses, workshops and books that teach people how to grow their abilities. Plus, you’ll get plenty of practice in the real world, so you’ll get better in time.

So, what are the top skills that’ll help you get a job? This employability skills report by the Chartered Management Institute shows the main competencies that employers want to see on people's CVs. Their research focused on hybrid working (when you work at home and on-site), but the skills are vital in any professional environment. We’ve taken inspiration from their report to put together this list.

There’ll always be industry-specific exceptions but, in general, you've got the following skills:

• Team working
• Critical thinking and problem-solving
• Resilience
• Communication
• Self-management
• Flexibility
• Initiative
• Digital literacy
• Innovation and creativity
• Emotional intelligence

Team working is how well you work with others. It includes building positive working relationships, being a team player and delegating tasks. It also involves effective communication. To work well as a team, you need to keep everyone updated about your progress and let others know if there’s an issue. So, no struggling in silence here! A great collaborator helps their colleagues – and knows they’ll get them out of a pickle too.

A great way to get better at teamwork is by getting involved with any kind of group or team project. Think about joining a sports club or signing up for a community organisation. You’ll even grow your teamwork skills with cooperative games, escape rooms and other social activities – the perfect excuse to get your mates together.

To show teamwork skills, emphasise how the group worked together and how successful the team was. Getting the right balance between talking about the team and yourself is tricky. Taking credit for the team's success will make it appear that you’re more interested in your own progress than being part of a team. But you still need to talk about your role. You need to make it clear how you contributed to the team’s success. So, if you were a leader, tell the interviewer.

Critical thinking is the ability to evaluate and analyse information. You’ll use critical thinking in so many working scenarios, including dealing with unexpected logistics problems in a shop and examining the validity of data sets.

Critical thinking seems intimidating to practise but it’s simple if you break it down. Focus on your active listening skills to make sure that you get all the necessary information, then break down any problem into multiple steps. It’s fun to practise with the help of puzzles and hypothetical problems, such as crisis management games. And yes, it’s another skill set you’ll grow doing escape rooms.

The best way to show your problem-solving skills is to talk about when you faced a problem and found a solution. The most powerful examples will be short or medium-term things (rather than longer-lasting issues). Shorter examples show you’re able to apply your critical thinking skills while on a tight time limit.

Resilience means keeping going after setbacks, such as unexpected problems or negative feedback. Bad situations will come up sometimes, but being resilient helps you deal with them.

You’ll mostly gain resilience by facing setbacks and working through them. But we don’t want you to face more struggles just so you build up your skills. Another way of increasing your resilience is to work on stress management. Techniques such as meditation will help you learn how to react calmly to future problems. Another way to learn resilience is to take on complex tasks where you’re expected to struggle at first. Don’t set yourself up to fail at work but tackling a tricky puzzle that needs multiple attempts is one way of building resilience. Hey, it’s another reason to take on an escape room.

Make it clear when you’ve used your resilience in previous jobs or education. Maybe you had to change the direction of an essay mid-way through or had a bad interaction with a customer – these are great examples of resilience.

These skills include verbal and written communication with colleagues, clients, customers, suppliers, partners and more. A good communicator tailors their message to the audience and situation. Employers are looking for people who communicate clearly and concisely. It’s also important to learn how to balance a professional tone with friendly warmth.

Practice is the best way. Aim to become more comfortable with talking or writing to people in all kinds of situations. It’s helpful to look at examples of different writing and speech styles. By taking note of how people communicate with you, you’ll learn how to respond. There are also courses that’ll help you improve communication.

Your CV and cover letter should’ve already shown off your written communication skills. You’ve made it to the interview so now it’s your time to impress with your verbal communication.

Make sure everything you say is easy to understand. Practise answers to common interview questions to make sure you don’t fumble over your words.

If you’re asked to give examples of communication in past jobs or education, think of different cases for internal and external communications. How did you consult with coursemates on a group project? Did you write for the student newspaper?

Self-management is vital for completing tasks and delivering good work without supervision. Employers love self-motivated workers as it frees up managers to handle more important tasks. They don’t need to spend their days watching over your shoulder if they know you’re reliable.

Being good at self-management involves nailing your time management and self-assessment of progress. It’s not all about being alone though. Self-awareness means you know when to seek out help if you need it.

The best way to build up your self-management skills is to take it slowly. Gradually take on extra responsibilities and plan out your time properly. Don’t take too much on in one go.

Want to learn outside of work or uni? Try taking on freelance work or a personal passion project. When you’re working alone, you’ll have to learn self-management. There’s nobody to hide behind – and nobody to remind you what you should be doing.

To show your self-management skills, talk about the times you’ve managed yourself. It doesn’t matter whether it’s related to work or your studies. Did you complete a project for a competition or carry out a campaign for a side hustle? Think about when you’ve been in charge of your workload and meeting deadlines.

Being flexible is about being able to quickly adjust to new problems or situations that come up. Adaptability will help you take on unexpected duties, deal with clients with different needs and handle hectic workplaces.

It’s hard to practise adjusting to change as we can't always guarantee how that change will come up. However, one way to prepare yourself is by becoming more familiar with what you’d do if an unexpected situation happened. When change does happen, the best thing to do is to keep a level head, assess the situation and start planning a way to deal with it. Once you’ve dealt with a curveball, you’ll be more confident when the next surprise happens.

Your range of work and educational history will show your flexibility. It’s also worth highlighting any roles you’ve had where things changed frequently or where you dealt with unexpected circumstances.

Whatever stage you’re at in your career, having initiative is important as it’ll make you want to improve things for yourself and your company. It means making smart decisions and working under your own steam to get things done.

Build your self-direction by having a clear plan of what you want to achieve. Learn to better analyse situations and work out the best ways to proceed. Once you know what to do, the next step is to trust yourself (which is sometimes the hardest part). Believe in yourself and you’ll get there.

Highlight your initiative by talking about how you’ve gone above and beyond. If you started a hobby group or university society, that’s great. Alternatively, talk about how you approached a project with minimal instruction.

Digital skills are vital in a lot of fields. Employers expect graduates to have basic tech skills, such as the use of consumer applications, word processing, making slideshows and using websites.

If you’re not tech-savvy, some courses will help you learn basic and intermediate digital skills. Check to see if your local library or college is running any free courses. It’s also possible to upskill yourself by using digital programs in your own time.

Simply talk about the digital skills you’ve got and give examples of what you’ve done before. It's also worth asking what software the company uses. That way, you’ll be able to say if you’ve already got experience or discuss similar tools you’ve used in the past.

Innovation is important to help things move forward and to keep companies growing. It means thinking outside the box and coming up with new ways to do things.

Read books, magazines and websites for ideas and never shut down new ideas just because they’re different. Keep your mind open and you’ll find so many new sources of inspiration.

If you’ve got an example of when you came up with a new idea, it’s a great time to bring it up. Perhaps you came up with a show format for your student radio or presented a concept to a manager at a past job. Whatever it is, be sure to talk about how your innovation helped.

Emotional intelligence is all about being in touch with your emotions and the feelings of those around you (including co-workers and clients). It helps make sure that work environments are healthy, with fewer disagreements and misunderstandings.

A good way to improve your emotional intelligence is to practise listening to people more closely. People often discuss things that are upsetting them but sometimes you’ll have to read between the lines. Learning about body language will also help you understand what someone’s expressing. That way, you’ll pick up on contradictions. So, if somebody’s saying they’re happy to do a task but they’re suddenly sitting tensely, you’ll know that something’s not right.

While there's rarely a single example of emotional intelligence to display, speak kindly of people throughout your interview. Showing that you understand people's emotional needs when discussing past workplaces is a great place to start.

Want to make your CV stand out? Here are more examples of employability skills:

• Leadership skills
• Organisational skills
• Entrepreneurial skills
• Patience
• Perseverance
• Confidence
• Numeracy
• Cultural awareness
• Ability to work under pressure
• Integrity and accountability

Employability skills are important because you’ll use them in any field. Whatever job you’re doing, they’ll help you do it better. With these skills, it’s easier to collaborate with others, manage your time and be as productive as possible.

There’s a misconception that soft skills are less important than hard skills (ie. technical qualifications or specialist knowledge), but that’s simply not true. Employers value soft skills because they’ll help in any job role.

Employers look for employability skills because they want to make sure that their workers will handle their tasks without too much management. So, building on these skills will instantly make you a more attractive employee and more likely to get a job.

Plus, employability skills will help with anything else you want to do in life. From studies to personal projects, skills such as resilience and self-management will make it easier to cope with whatever life throws at you.

When you’re writing your CV, it's important to make it clear where your strengths lie.

Our top tips for showing your employability skills are:

List your hard and soft skills here. Having your key skills in a bullet-pointed list is a great way for employers to quickly see what you’re good at. Make sure you call out the key employability skills we’ve spoken about. For some less common skills, consider briefly mentioning why they’re useful (if you’ve got room). But, generally, it’s enough to list the skill and expand later in your examples.

In your employment and education sections, include information about the skills you’ve gained from specific jobs or courses. It helps employers understand how you use your abilities in real-life settings. Plus, it gives employers more details about what you know and where you’ve learned your skills.

It's especially important if you’re looking for your first grad job. Show the employer why your part-time uni job or your volunteering stint is relevant by telling them about the transferable skills you gained.

Every word counts on your CV as you’ll be tight for space, so expand in more detail on your cover letter. Don’t overload it with skills but it’s a good idea to mention the main abilities that’ll be useful for the job that you’re applying for.

Employability skills are sometimes called soft skills or transferable skills. They make you more employable in any industry and are the key things employers look for.

Some of the main job skills are teamwork, problem-solving and communication. They’re all important for working well with others with minimal supervision, so they’re key graduate career skills.

While it’s harder to train soft skills than hard skills, there are still plenty of ways to build your employability skills, including courses and workshops – alongside real-life experience (including escape rooms…).

It's important to make sure you display your employability skills on your CV in the skill section and mention them where relevant in your employment and education history.

Get interview-ready with our guide on how to prepare for an interview. Remind yourself of the skills you’ve got and go and land that next exciting job. Good luck!