Employability skills are the personal and professional skills that employers consistently look for when recruiting and developing staff. While technical knowledge may get someone through the door, these workplace skills often determine how well they perform, work with others, and progress into more senior roles.
With 75% of companies reporting that they struggle to fill vacancies because of a skills shortage, and with 48% of employees in another study saying that they would change jobs if offered training opportunities, employability skills are continually essential.
At a Glance
Employability skills are the transferable skills and personal qualities that help people work effectively, adapt to different situations, and succeed throughout their careers.
In this guide you’ll learn:
- What employability skills are
- Why employers value them
- The 10 most important employability skills
- How these skills benefit employees, employers, and trainers
What are Employability Skills?
Employability skills are the transferable skills, personal qualities, and workplace behaviors that help people gain employment, perform effectively in their roles, and develop successful careers. Unlike job-specific technical skills, they can be applied across almost every industry and profession.
For job seekers, these skills can help you stand out from other candidates. For employers, they contribute to a more productive and adaptable workforce. For trainers and HR professionals, they represent some of the most valuable workplace skills to develop through learning and development.
The ten employability skills below are among the most important for today’s workplace.
10 core employability skills are:
- Communication skills
- Computer Skills
- Empathy and social skills
- Critical Thinking
- Problem Solving
- Time management
- Leadership skills
- Ethics
- Resilience
- Creativity skills
Why Are Employability Skills Important?
Employability skills are important from three different points of view.
As a job seeker, having experience in core employability skills gives you an opportunity to stand out. Many job seekers these days have degrees and work experience related to the job being applied for. Employability skills give you more depth and a much better chance to succeed in getting the job.
As a company, the more skilled your workforce is in these core skills, the more likely you will have a more productive workforce, in addition to a happier workforce. Managers who, for example, have a good understanding of ‘Communication Skills’ and ‘Resilience Skills’ will be better leaders.
As a corporate trainer, employability skills are a great opportunity to provide workshops and training sessions in-house as a freelance trainer. ‘Resilience training’ is particularly relevant and in demand these days. Likewise, communication skills, including ‘Intercultural Communication’ and ‘Advanced Communication Skills’, are always in demand.
What Are the Most Important Employability Skills?
Let’s look at each of the ten employability skills we mentioned earlier.
1. Communication Skills
Communication skills have always been essential in the workplace, but they are increasingly essential in this global world.
Being able to communicate and deal with colleagues and customers from different countries, cultures, backgrounds, and age groups means that communication is harder than it was in the past.
Consider age groups, for example. As we talked about in the Generational Diversity post, we are now seeing five different generations in the workplace at the same time.
The differences in the skills, background, and ages of employees mean that employees in your workplace might have different ways of interpreting things, speaking, and thinking.
Training in the following areas can help employees improve workplace communication.
- Managing Different Generations in the Workplace – to make communication and understanding better between all staff, no matter what decade they were born in.
- Intercultural Communication – to help staff embrace and understand how to communicate with other people, no matter what their background or culture.
- How to Give Constructive Feedback training – to teach staff (especially managers) how to communicate feedback the right way.
- How to Manage Virtual teams and employees.
If you are looking to be a team leader or manager, it is also well worth having some experience in managing meetings online, such as with one or more of the following:
- Zoom
- MS Teams
2. Computer Skills
No matter what job you are doing or planning to do these days, the chances are that some interaction with a computer or some form of technology is needed.
If you are Generation Y or Z, then you will have been brought up in the era of the Internet and smartphones, and using computers is far less scary in terms of learning new I.T. or computer-based skills.
Moving forward, if you have any of the computer skills below, this will aid your employability:
- MS Office (such as MS Word, PowerPoint, and Excel)
- Any experience with database software can be particularly advantageous to have (such as if you have skills or training in MySQL, Access, Oracle, or Microsoft Access)
- Presentation software skills (such as PowerPoint, Google Slides, or another package)
- Social Media Management Skills – whether it be being an expert in Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter for marketing a business
3. Empathy and Social Skills
‘Empathy’ is a term that is increasingly important, especially when it comes to training managers.
Empathy is concerned with being able to understand how another person might be feeling and, through this understanding, being able to better communicate and manage others.
Quite often, empathy is a part of the Emotional Intelligence training materials that some companies offer, as empathy is a part of EQ training.
As mental health awareness is given more consideration in the workplace, training in empathy skills is only going to become more important over time.
4. Critical Thinking Skills
Critical Thinking is another increasingly useful skill to have, and in interviews if you can show good examples of critical thinking. Then it certainly adds to your employability.
So what are critical thinking skills and why are they important?
Critical thinking is all about being able to step aside from your own personal feelings and emotions in order to look at a situation with open eyes and to look at the facts.
The difficulty with facts is that they are open to different viewpoints that are based on our epistemology (meaning how we interpret the same data and get different results because we each have a viewpoint, and this directs how we analyze things and thus interpret information).
So, having the skills and frame of mind where you are able to take raw facts and make good and unbiased decisions is a particularly useful skill.
Some key areas in critical thinking skills are:
- Analysis
- Interpretation (and normalization)
- Decision-making
- Planning
- Implementation
As a trainer, ‘Critical Thinking’ skills are a topic that is often of interest to HR departments that provide workplace training.
As a job seeker, if you can provide examples in your resume of being good at critical thinking skills, then you are more employable.
5. Problem-Solving
Being a good problem solver is another incredibly useful skill and one that employers need.
Solving problems has become more difficult and complex in recent years, with the workplace being one that sometimes involves:
- a physical space and an online space (with remote workers)
- customers from countries worldwide, given the global online marketplace
- employees from a diverse range of countries and cultures
So, solving problems in the workplace is not just about solving specific work tasks related to a product or service but also managing a diverse workforce that is sometimes not in the same physical space as you.
Problem-solving skills often need to incorporate the critical thinking skills we talked about in the previous point, in addition to using skills such as:
- Active Listening Skills
- Emotional Intelligence skills
- Knowing how to manage virtual teams
- Communication Skills
6. Time Management Skills
Time Management is not a new skill, but it remains one that is essential, and it always likely to be.
As a corporate trainer, this is always a great topic to provide workshops on, and you can offer this as a 2-hour, 1/2-day, or full-day training session.
Time management skills include the following:
- Scheduling and prioritizing tasks
- Understanding and using SMART Goals
- Being able to find techniques for maximizing time
- Having the ability to motivate people you manage, to guide them towards avoiding procrastination, and to be time-efficient
7. Leadership Skills
Leadership Skills are essential if you are managing or looking to manage other employees, and there are a number of topics that come under this category.
Having experience in any of these Leadership Skills can be especially useful, particularly so if you are applying for a management position. The leadership skills that are worth including on your resume are:
- Delegation Skills – essential for ensuring your team is productive
- Presentation skills and experience can be invaluable. Being able to communicate what you need your team to do and to understand is essential.
8. Ethics Skills
Being able to show experience or proof of personal ethics is another employability skill that is worth considering and trying to get onto your resume.
The following buzzwords are particularly useful examples of employability skills in terms of ethics:
- Integrity
- Ethical reasoning
- Responsibility
- Professionalism
9. Resilience Skills
For employability, Resilience skills are also an asset if you can show adaptability and the ability to take on new challenges and handle any pressures.
Resilience skills are essential for companies, given that they need managers who are able to successfully manage no matter what the working and market conditions.
10. Creativity Skills
Creativity is an essential employability skill because creativity is often the solution to many workplace issues.
So, in this sense, creativity refers to the ability to come up with creative ideas rather than meaning creative in an artistic sense.
Good managers and leaders are able to think out of the box and sometimes find unconventional solutions.
FAQs
Can employability skills be learned?
Yes. While some people naturally excel at certain workplace skills, employability skills can be developed through training, practice, feedback, and workplace experience.
Which employability skills do employers value most?
Communication, teamwork, problem-solving, critical thinking, adaptability, leadership, and time management consistently rank among the skills employers value most across industries.
Are employability skills the same as soft skills?
Employability skills and soft skills overlap considerably. Employability skills usually include soft skills such as communication and teamwork, but may also include broader workplace competencies like digital literacy, professionalism, and ethics.
Why are employability skills important?
They help employees work effectively with others, adapt to changing workplace demands, improve performance, and increase career opportunities.
You can also browse all of our Soft Skills training guides here.
Teaching Employability Skills
If you came across this post on what employability skills are because you are doing research on what teaching and training topics managers, employees, and students are interested in, you might find the training materials we offer below of interest.
We provide PowerPoint slides and materials on a range of soft skills that are excellent skills for employability – see below.
