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    The Advantage for Graduates
    The Advantage for Graduates
    The Advantage for Graduates
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    The Advantage for Graduates

    By Emma Sue Prince

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    About this ebook

    The world of work graduates are entering is very different now. Nothing is predictable and graduates today need a whole raft of crucial skills to be equipped to handle the uncertainty, creativity, resourcefulness and agility that this new world demands.

    So what crucial soft skills do you need – those under-taught skills that will make the difference between getting and keeping that job, relationship, opportunity and your sense of humour (you’ll need that too!). Here are 6 that we will revisit throughout this e-book.

    Time Management – Far more to do with managing yourself rather than time. If success depends on effective action, then that action is your ability to focus your attention where it’s needed most and not responding solely on how you feel in the moment. This might be tricky. You have multiple demands and many distractions. You are going to be very used to shifting your focus – you do it all the time flitting from Facebook to work project to text to web surfing in a matter of minutes. But being “busy” does not necessarily equal to being productive and effective, even if it may feel that way sometimes!

    Communication – Think about how you come across to others. Empathy is a key skill you’ll need to actively nurture both on and off-line. Your presentation skills must be meticulous for any interview – that’s a threshold requirement. You need confidence to project yourself, speak honestly about your strengths and weaknesses and communicate with passion and integrity.

    Networking – How good are you at this? We live in a world dominated by constant information exchange and daily innovation. Your relationships are your only competitive advantage and they create the channel through which ideas and information flow, where new ideas are shared, discussed and perfected. If you can cultivate a large relationship network you will meet the right people, find that job, build a business, learn about new trends and spread ideas. You will need to make time and effort to deliberately and consciously do this.

    Writing – A lost skill and one that might not have been taught properly in the first place. Shocking but true. You absolutely have to be able to write proficiently so that others can understand you because they, in turn, are being bombarded with stuff! Writing well goes for everything from your emails to cover letters to your CV. Write clearly, directly and intelligently. Use your writing skills to take useful notes – one of the most productive things you can do because they'll help you remember what you see, hear or read when you’re learning something new or trying to remember something specific.

    Optimism – You may think that how you act is a product of how you are feeling, but actually you will find that you can change the way you are feeling by how you act. A great attitude always leads to great experiences and you’re going to need that great attitude no matter what life throws at you. You’ve got to be able to generate and radiate goodwill to maintain a competitive edge. Optimism can be learned.

    Critical Thinking – Every day you’re bombarded with vast amounts of rapidly changing information. You need to be able to evaluate it, sort the valuable from the trivial, analyse its relevance and meaning and relate it to other information. You need to be able to do this fast. This is raw material for success today! Without this ability and awareness of thinking much more sharply, you will be left behind. You’ve got to be able to challenge assumptions, look at things from lots of different angles, think outside the box, collaborate with others and be solutions-focused.

    This Ebook focuses on you, the graduate to give you the advantage to stay one step ahead, fulfil that potential you’ve been nurturing all your life and not only survive but truly thrive in this brilliant new world. Yes, I did say brilliant!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEmma Sue Prince
    Release dateJun 6, 2016
    ISBN9781311082596
    The Advantage for Graduates
    Author

    Emma Sue Prince

    Emma Sue Prince has long specialised in soft skills, trainer training, materials design and management development. Her work has taken her all over the world consulting in emerging and developing countries and designing qualifications and experiential learning programmes.She is the director of Unimenta, a training support network and virtual business supporting trainers who deliver soft skills with guidance, materials, news and professional development. Membership is free at www.unimenta.comEmma Sue believes passionately in the principles and concepts she writes about in The Advantage and tries to apply them in all that she does.She lives in Godalming, Surrey with her family. This Advantage her first book.Find out more at www-the-advantage.info

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      Book preview

      The Advantage for Graduates - Emma Sue Prince

      The Advantage for Graduates – how to get the soft skills you need right now

      By Emma Sue Prince

      Copyright 2016 Emma Sue Prince

      Smashwords Edition

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorised retailer.

      Thank you for your support.

      Table of Contents

      Chapter 1: The Beginning

      Chapter 2: BE Entrepreneurial

      Chapter 3: BE Resilient

      Chapter 4: BE Proactive

      Chapter 5: BE a Listener

      Chapter 6: BE a Communicator

      Chapter 7: BE a Light in the Room

      References

      About the Author

      Connect with me

      The beginning…

      "The question is not who is going to let me, it’s who is going to stop me" – Ayn Rand

      Welcome to the new world of work.

      The world of work you are entering now is a very different landscape from the one your parents will have gone into. Gone are the days when work followed a predictable escalator where you completed school, got some qualifications, went to university (probably either for free or at a very low cost), got some experience, maybe went traveling for a while and then got your first job.

      That first job may well have been a stepping stone to entering a profession like becoming a lawyer, accountant or teacher, self-employment, setting up a new business or simply gaining experience and expertise in different areas related to your field, or even more than one field, moving up in status and rank, hopefully with retirement at a reasonable age, home ownership and comfortable living. Up until only relatively recently, the environment in which we worked and operated was more or less stable. If you did the right things you could have a rewarding professional life or business and that was the general expectation whether starting a new business or being employed.

      This is unrecognisable now. The predictable escalator is jammed in every career at every level. This is something described very well in LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman’s book "The Start-up of You" (1) and there is no clear pathway any more. Those following the sure thing professions, for example, accountancy, law or medicine, have found themselves dealing with unexpected redundancy, a focus on short-term performance, increased productivity demands, no job security as well as all the massive changes technology has brought to every job.

      Savvy workers have either developed the right skills to remain competitive within their industry or reinvented themselves with portfolio careers. Others recognised when it was time to get out altogether and follow a different career path, often downsizing and changing their lives in the process. The fortunate few made their money before the economic downturn and unluckier ones are now out of the job market completely. Even worse, highly experienced and highly educated individuals are being turned down countless times for employment, even though they are willing to work for far less pay than before.

      Similar scenarios ring true whatever pathway might have been chosen. Compared with now, until only a few years ago, the world of work was relatively stable, predictable and the escalator flowed more or less smoothly to the top. Now – we need to and have to find ways to ‘unjam’ this escalator. Actually, let me rephrase that – you will. You’re about to head into the most challenging labour market in 80 years.

      Paradoxically and ironically perhaps, many of you will have spent your school and university years preparing to be outstanding: you may have enjoyed music and sports activities, volunteered for various causes, have travelled to exotic places. If you had any kind of learning challenges or difficulty, these would have been recognised: you would have received support, standardised tests and extra time for examinations. Your school reports will, most likely, have been positive. The framework of school and university would have been clear and predictable. In most cases your parents will have supported and helped you with schoolwork and developing your unique potential.

      Here’s the dilemma – you, the best-prepared university generation ever, have just spent most of your school years and the last three or four of the most formative years of your lives in an environment that’s the exact opposite of the real world. And even now that you are out of university, most of you will still not be out in the world earning a living, you are more likely to be one of the 65% of graduates (2) back at home with parents or relatives. And those parents, bless them, will not charge you rent or tell you to move out and get a job. Hopefully, after reading this book, if you are in that 65%, you will soon do both.

      The only thing that differentiates you from other graduates is your soft skills.

      Technical expertise, knowledge and qualifications are all threshold competencies that, these days, everyone has or works towards.

      What are soft skills? Whether you call them soft skills, generic/core skills, personal development or just employability, today’s employers want skills like critical thinking, a willingness to take risks, use initiative, have confidence, adaptability and flexibility, project passion and enthusiasm.

      These aren’t just important for the workplace, they’re important for your whole life.

      Yet, your education will not have equipped you with the tools and skills you need to prosper in today’s world and your parents have failed you because they won’t have taught you skills, such as being resilient and adaptable, because these skills were simply not the survival skills that they are today.

      We live in amazing times really. We have instant access to global knowledge and social networks and we live in the true information age. You have grown up in it.

      Yet, this explosion of information has not led to an increase in knowledge and wisdom nor or self-awareness. Self-awareness is the key ingredient each of us needs in order to lead purposeful and independent lives.

      Bleak? Far from it. The world today presents countless opportunities for new thinking, entrepreneurship, finding the work you are truly suited for and love. You are probably applying for work now, going after jobs and opportunities, being rejected too. That’s ok and you need to get used to rejection – the more risks you take, the more rejection you’ll experience but risk-taking is going to have to become something you happily embrace.

      In no particular order, here are some of the skills that an engineering company expect their workforce

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