Employability Skills
Employability Skills
Employability Skills
Employability skills is often a term that gets thrown around a lot in the student affairs job search. Though employability skills can often be pretty nebulous: what exactly does employability mean?
What skills do new student affairs professionals need to have and demonstrate in order to be successful in their job search?
This article will review the top four most discussed and critical skills to have as a new and developing student affairs professional. They include communication skills, collaboration skills, critical thinking skills, and technology skills. These four areas will be covered in this article. This article will also determine how student affairs professionals’ work can connect and develop in these four areas.
Communication skills
Communication skills include student affairs professionals’abilities to connect and communicate with one another; students; faculty; staff; and other administrators. These communication skills include written communication, oral communication, interpersonal communication, as well as active listening.
Written communicationis most commonly found in student affairs work in the form of emails; but these can often translate over into SMS (text) messaging as well as using different social media platforms. Knowing when and how to communicate with a parent versus a student via email is critical to know and understand.
Likewise, oral communication includes student affairs professionals’ abilities to communicate with others through speech and discussion. This includes connecting with others in person through conversation; small groups; over the phone; or even through web conferencing services like Zoom, Google Hangouts, or Skype. This skill also includes determining when to communicate with others via writing versus communicating with them in person.
Interpersonal skills involve student affairs professionals’ interaction with others in group settings. This could include leading small team meetings; advising student leaders; or networking at a signature event such as homecoming or new student orientation. Student affairs professionals should enact principles of active listening at these events and activities.
Collaboration skills
Collaboration skills for student affairs professionals include a multitude of different areas. These are often application based as they hinge on working with others through projects; managing conflicts; leadership; and organization.
Collaboration is often a highly underrated student affairs competency. That’s because collaboration is one of those facets of student affairs work that permeates though roles, positions, and institutions. In almost any student affairs role, you’ll be asked to work with other administrators; faculty; and staff on different projects and initiatives.
Likewise, your involvement in these different projects: whether they are addressing student retention; student engagement; or student success requires you to personally manage work groups of people. You’ll need to communicate and engage with them to set a tone and direction. This requires personal leadership and management of others in order to achieve your goals and outcomes.
Often this requires student affairs professionals to approach complex problems and situations with an optimistic attitude and self-motivation. Often, challenges arising from crisis management; roommate conflicts; or difficult parents can be daunting. But reliance on professional assets like emotional intelligence and organization can help you succeed in these challenging areas.
Most of all, collaboration skills require student affairs professionals to be adaptable. You can never know the outcome of all activities and initiatives that you may take on. Plans change; people come and go; and the institution may set a new course. Your ability to adapt to situations and apply your best professional discretion will serve you well.
Critical thinking skills
Critical thinking is a sought after skill set for all institutions. That’s because it involves professionals’ abilities to use their own education, knowledge, skills, and abilities to create and apply solutions to complex problems. These involve individuals’ abilities to think analytically about problems such as student retention and interaction with student affairs related services. But knowing about problems alone doesn’t qualify most professionals. They must also put plans into action by utilizing their experiences and creativity using both inductive and deductive reasoning.
Problem solving alone is one of the best applications for the skill sets developed by student affairs professionals. This field comes with all sorts of challenges both large and small. Determining solutions is only one part of the addressing them; the other part is putting plans into practice. Problem solving relies on the initiative and enterprise of new student affairs professionals to address; solve; and evaluate their plans.
Though all problem solving begins with planning and organization. Utilizing both communication skills and collaboration skills; student affairs professionals can unite others with diverse experiences and backgrounds on organizing a way to address new and emergent challenges. To do so requires self-management. That’s because on top of the collaboration responsibilities of new professionals; they are also required to balance established; emerging; and future priorities as they arise.
Perhaps the most useful critical thinking skill for student affairs professionals to use is to learn how to keep learning. This will serve them well into the future as a way to further their own professional development and address issues before they arise.
Technology skills
Technology skills are often an area where many student affairs professionals already have an established competency. Technology skills means utilizing software packages like Microsoft Office Suite; email; digital calendars; search engines; and social media.
We tend to already use these tools every day. That’s why many student affairs professionals may overlook competencies in these areas. However, most should take a closer look at how they use these technologies and determine how they can be applied to advance their professionals development; career; and the field as whole.
Understanding and determining how others use their personal digital devices influences the application of both collaboration and communication skills. That could inform a student affairs professional on how they should format a message for a text message versus an email.
Likewise, most student affairs professionals use search engines like Google on a regular basis. But information literacy; competency; and relevance are incredibly important in determining the scope and application of information found online.
This is mostly found in social media management where the reach and scope of information on these platforms greatly influences how many higher education stakeholders interact with one another. That could include executive administration; alumni groups; as well as mass media.
Takeaways
This article reviewed the top four most discussed and critical skills to have as a new and developing student affairs professional. The top four areas included communication skills, collaboration skills, critical thinking skills, and technology skills.
This article covered these four areas in greater depth as well as related some of the most common student affairs related projects; tasks; and activities that require and utilize these skills.
I hope that you found this article useful! If you need some additional help on your student affairs job search, then check out the eBook The Student Affairs Job Search: A Comprehensive Guide available here.
Happy searching,
References
Doyle, A. (2019, June 15). Important Employability Skills For Workplace Success. Retrieved December 3, 2019, from https://www.thebalancecareers.com/employability-skills-list-and-examples-4143571.
Duszyński, M. (2019, November 22). Top 10 Employability Skills: Definition & List of Examples. Retrieved December 3, 2019, from https://zety.com/blog/employability-skills.
McPherson, D. (2019, July 10). The Employability Skills Checklist. Retrieved December 3, 2019, from https://blog.edx.org/the-employability-skills-checklist/.
Wels, B. (2013, August 15). 8 essential employability skills. Retrieved December 3, 2019, from https://career-ready.blogs.latrobe.edu.au/2013/08/16/8-essential-employability-skills/.
Zambas, J. (2018, January 18). The 18 Most In-Demand Employability Skills. Retrieved December 3, 2019, from https://www.careeraddict.com/top-skills.
Cite this Article
Eng, D. (2019, December 09). Employability Skills. Retrieved MONTH DATE, YEAR, from https://www.jobhakr.com/blog-1/2019/12/9/employability-skills
Internal Ref: JHKRLOWL589E5