Assignment: Individual Employability Skills Report

1500-2000 words (excluding appendices, reference list and executive summary).

"Designed to link theory to practice and personal development"

Theory - academic journals, books (highlighted in the lectures).

Practice - what do employers want?

Personal development - about self-reflection and evaluating your strengths and weaknesses; planning what you need to do to improve these skills and how.

Step 1:

Find an internship, placement/year in industry (or other graduate-level job) that interests you.You will find these here:

1) Ratemyplacement: www.ratemyplacement.co.uk
2) Targetjobs - https://targetjobs.co.uk/internships
3) Graduate Prospects:https://www.prospects.ac.uk/graduate-jobs

4) Careers and Employability Service, University of Kent: https://careers.kent.ac.uk/home.html (use your university log-in)

Next, download the job description and convert into a Word document. This should be in the Appendix together with your Action Plan and your CV.

Your focus is on the skills on the job description, specifically under person specification or requirements. If the job description lists a very long set of skills that you are not able to reflect on and analyse effectively within the word limit then please state in the introduction which skills you will focus on and why (i.e. define the scope of the report). On the other hand, if you find an advert for a job that does not list any required skills, please select a generic one https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles.

Step 2:

Write a self-reflective report (you can use first person singular, i.e. ‘I'). The lecture slides in week 6 cover reflective writing and general report structure. There is also additional information about report structure and what to include in each section in Moodle.

Introduction: Covers the report task and defines its scope. Refer to the first point in the terms of reference.

Main body: Focus on employability skills. Write about these by reflecting on your personal experience. Apply theory and concepts highlighted in the lectures in weeks 8-11 to help you discuss and analyse these skills. You could refer to your CV as this will detail some of the experiences you are reflecting on.

Conclusion: Evaluation - your strengths/weaknesses in terms of skills. You could refer to your CV as this summarises your skills.
Recommendation: What action do you need to take to improve your weaker skills; action plan for yourself (refer to your personal development/action plan).

References: You will need to make reference to journal articles and text books to discuss why key employability skills are needed by employers and to identify the theory you are using to reflect and analyse your own skills.

Appendices:Three appendices in total.

1) A copy of your job description (Word or PDF format);
2) Your up-to-date graduate level CV (not your school leaver CV)
3) Your action plan.