Techniques for developing employability skills
Nowadays, development of employability skills is an important factor that both employees and employers should not overlook. Employability skills can be divided into two categories: Emotional Quotient (EQ) and measurable work-related competencies, such as English skills, management skills, leadership skills, and communication skills. Both categories of the employability skills should be developed to ultimately improve the overall performance. It is not easy for an employee to possess both categories of the skills, but it is not too difficult either.
Many techniques can be used to develop employability skills, depending on the situations and conditions of the individual or organization. Some of the techniques that we recommend are as follows:
1. Analyzing your weakness: It is quite difficult to identify one’s weaknesses since most people do not know or accept that they have weaknesses. However, if you don’t know what weaknesses you have or what skills you can improve, you may ask people around you, such as your colleagues, supervisor, or family members, or use certain tests, such as psychological tests to find out your personality, language tests, and calculation tests.
2. Setting objectives with timeline and expected result: After identifying your weaknesses, you can set objectives as follows:
What: Indicate clearly what skills you want to improve. What is the goal that you want to reach?
Why: Why do you choose to improve such skills? After you have developed those skills, what will you get in return? For example, you will have better performance, you will have a better chance of promotion, or you will get along well with other people.
When: Indicate the exact time you need to develop each skill.
How: Find your assistant. Skill development can be done through many methods, such as taking a variety of courses organized by different institutions, learning from your supervisor or experienced colleagues, or reading textbooks or case studies.
3. Execution: Taking action is crucial. If you have developed the best plan to achieve your goal, but you do not implement such plan, your plan is nothing more than a sheet of paper. You just wasted your time analyzing and planning without getting anything in return.
4. Evaluation & improvement: After implementing your skill development plan, you need to evaluate if your skills have been improved to the point that you want or not. If the result of the evaluation is not satisfactory, you have to analyze and find out the errors of any step so you can improve your method or strategy in order to finally obtain a satisfactory result. If the evaluation result is satisfactory, you may set a more challenging goal.
Development of employability skills is not difficult, but the most difficult part is execution that will lead you to success. If you feel that you are not motivated to take action or do not realize the importance of skill development; for example, if you think that skill development will do no good to you, such idea is damaging you. You should think positively. Everyone has a potential to improve his skills and many people have a desire to continuously improve themselves, but you have to make an effort to turn such desire into reality.