Employability Skills

The average teenager uses many skills every day while at school, playing sports and enjoying leisure activities.

However, teenagers often do not realise that these skills can be applied to the world of work, and they need support on how to signal these in CVs, applications, and job interviews. They need to build a skills language that allows them to describe what they've learned and explain what they can do. Skills are things that you have learned to do; young people will have skills at various levels. The more they practice, the more their skill levels will heighten. Helping your teenager understand their skill set and talking and writing about their skills is critical. Employability skills are the skills, qualities, and attitudes that employers say are essential for their workplace.

The following employability skills have been identified as the key skills most desired by NZ employers.

1. Positive attitude - Employers want young people to have a can-do attitude. They need to show optimism, be honest, and show respect. They are also looking for those who are enthusiastic and motivated who show initiative.

2. Communication - Young people need to understand and reflect on how we communicate. They need to be confident to ask questions when unsure or unclear, understand how employers and employees and customers communicate, and speak, listen and share ideas appropriately.

3. Teamwork - Help your teen communicate how they work well with others to complete tasks and achieve set goals. They need to be able to show how they contribute to developing new ideas or approaches. They also need to demonstrate how they work well with others of different genders, cultures, or beliefs. Being able to recognise supervisors' and managers' authority and follow directions is also essential.

4. Self-management - Being able to show that they arrive at school and work on time with the appropriate equipment. Understanding and reflecting on their own words, actions, and behavior and how these might affect others. They need to demonstrate commitment and responsibility, following instructions, and the ability to complete assigned tasks. Young people also need to be responsible for their health and well-being and follow health and safety guidelines.

5. A willingness to learn - teens need to signal the willingness to learn new tasks, skills, and information. Employers want people who are curious and enthusiastic about the job, organisation, and industry, looking for opportunities to work more effectively to make the business better, accepting advice, and learning from feedback.

6. Thinking skills, including problem-solving and decision-making. Problem-solving has become an essential skill; young people need to identify problems and assess options before making a decision.

7. Resilience - This means being able to show adaptability, and flexibility in new changing situations, and to handle challenges and setbacks by not giving up. Understanding the importance of seeking support and help when needed, recognise and accept mistakes made, and learn from them.

Tools parents can use to help their teen to recognise and signal these employability skills.

One of the things you can do with your teen is to complete the following employability skills exercises.

1. Use the worksheet link to get your teen to think of examples where they've used each of the employability skills.

2. Review the worksheet with them to see which skills have more examples and which skills are their strongest. Which skills need more work? Discuss with them how they may develop these skills.

3. Look at different career options that match their skills by completing the SkillsMatcher tool. Get them to consider the following questions:- Are these options of interest to your teen? Encourage them to research more information about careers of interest.

4. Other things you can do with your teen is to help them list all the paid and unpaid jobs alongside positions and responsibilities that they've held. Think about what they have done at school, volunteer and paid work or extracurricular activities they do.

Teens need to recognise the skills they develop from things like playing sport and belonging to teams, helping with hospitality, or leadership, taking part in events such as debates or drama productions belonging to organisations such as Scouts, Girl Guides, cadets or student volunteer army,and having a leadership role or being a student representative. They can also learn skills from the subjects you're studying. For example, are they good at problem solving in maths, or communicating by writing well or delivering presentations or attention to detail in their design class. This figure out your skills worksheet might help.

5. Other activities could include completing the skill worksheet, looking at advertisements in the area of work they are interested in and looking at which skills are important to develop. Get them to think about whether they hold these skills and how they would signal these in an application, job interview, or on their CV.