Transferable skills

Employers want to hire graduates who have technical knowledge related to the job, but that’s not nearly as important as good teamwork, decision-making and communication skills, and the ability to plan and prioritise work.

You will gain skills in a variety of ways, at and beyond university: from your degree, from experience in the workplace, and from your outside interests. Wherever you gain them, you need to be able to identify and translate them into a language which a potential employer will understand.

Skills can be grouped and named in many different ways, but the important thing is to identify and understand the headings most commonly used by employers. Below is a list of skills employers typically look for when hiring graduates (they are not in any particular order):

Information

Suggested activities

Use the Transferable Skills Audit document to list your transferable skills, describe the role or experience when you used each skill, and describe what tasks you completed to develop the skill.