Employability Skills Workshop Session Plan

Slide Number & Title Activity Timings Resources

Slide 1 – Employability Skills Workshop
Slide 2 - Introductions
Slide 3 – Today’s Objectives
Slide 4 – What are employability skills?
Slide 5 – Employability skills are
Slide 6 – Why do you need them?
Required
Holding slide while people arrive Training
powerpoint
Trainers introduce themselves 5mins
Attendees introduce themselves using a speed networking 20mins (will be
format or similar less if less
people)
Go through objectives 5mins
Talk through definition 5mins
Ask the attendees to brainstorm what attributes/skills they think 15mins
relate to employability
Show them the list of employability skills and discuss any 10mins
differences, do they know what each of the skills are (see briefing
sheet on entrepreneurship if needed)
Play the Skills Game – split them into groups of 3 or 4 and get 20mins Skills game
them to match attributes (resourcefulness, friendly, focused etc)
to each skill and then come up with an example of how they
could demonstrate each skill.
NB It is not essential that they match them up correctly this game
is more about getting them familiar with these terms and
discussing how they could illustrate having them
Talk about the research done by the CBI which suggests that 5mins
employers rate employability skills as the most important thing
they are looking for. In the current climate illustrating what skills
you have is even more important

This activity was undertaken as a part of the National HE STEM Programme, via the South West Spoke. For more information on South West Spoke projects, please see
www.hestem-sw.org.uk For more information on the overall national programme, please see www.hestem.ac.uk

Slide 7 – But often potential applicants
don’t have them
Slide 8 – Skills that Employers want and
how they can be developed
Slide 9 – Job Applications
Slide 10 – Airbus Application
This activity was undertaken as a part of the National HE STEM Programme, via the South West Spoke. For more information on South West Spoke projects, please see
www.hestem-sw.org.uk For more information on the overall national programme, please see www.hestem.ac.uk
Employability Skills Workshop Session Plan
Again this graph is from the CBI report and illustrates that 5mins
applicants either don’t have employability skills or more likely
don’t demonstrate they properly in interviews
Ask participants to complete the Employability Skills Audit 5mins Employability
worksheet. Run through the worksheet as a group identifying Skills Audit
each skill and discuss how they can be linked to the student worksheets
ambassador role.
Talk through what employers are looking at when going through 5 mins
job applications. The importance of having a CV, responding to
advertisements, good covering letters.
Click on the Airbus picture - this should take you to their online 5mins Access to the
application forms. Divide the participants into 5 groups and ask internet
each group to consider each of the attributes listed on the Airbus 10mins
“value and behaviours” section. Ask each group to consider the
type of questions an employer may ask when seeking information
on each attribute. In turn, ask each group to act as an employer
and ask the questions to the other participants. Explore the type
of information the employer would like to elicit.
Pick out key words that show the importance of employability
skills.
Hand out a job application to each group and ask them to identify Sample job
where in the application it asks for them to evidence subject applications
specific knowledge and then employability skills. Brainstorm as a
group how they might answer those employability skills questions
NB it is good to have a mix of graduate online applications and
 Employability Skills Workshop Session Plan

the more traditional CV and covering letter applications

Consider the job application process including the content of a CV Sample

Slide 11 – How can being a student
volunteer help acquire employability
skills?
Slide 12 – What can STEM Ambassadors
do?
Slide 13 - Next Steps
and covering letter. Look over the covering letter suggestion and covering
discuss the type of content that should be included in the letter
covering letter.
Highlight that the greater variety of volunteering activities they 10mins
do the more opportunities they will have to acquire and develop
these skills
Run through the examples listed on this slide as potential ways of 5 mins
gaining further experience and enhancing employability skills.
Talk through next steps and hand out evaluation sheets 10mins Evaluation
sheets

Enhancing the Employability of STEM Student Ambassadors - resources by Enhancing the Employability of STEM Student Ambassadors project is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

This activity was undertaken as a part of the National HE STEM Programme, via the South West Spoke. For more information on South West Spoke projects, please see
www.hestem-sw.org.uk For more information on the overall national programme, please see www.hestem.ac.uk