What Are Employability Skills?

What Are Employability Skills? The days of the one-job career is passe. These days it is a question of whether you are employable, not if you are employed. Keeping your current job should not be your main preoccupation. Instead, you should do every­thing necessary to ensure that you are always employable.

You are as good as your next accomplishment, not your last. All these spell the creation of an entirely new corporate battlefield.

In order that you may have a fair chance of surviving, you need to have the following qualities:

1. Flexibility.

There will not be any cast-in-stone job descriptions. You will be given the parameters of your job responsibilities but you need to adopt the stance of readily accepting additional responsibilities outside this main domain.

You may end up having a full plate but, in the longer term, this approach will work toward your benefit. By being given additional responsibilities and being exposed to more things and a wider scope of responsibilities, you will actually have the opportunity to learn more and acquire more skills and knowledge. This will in turn con­tribute to making you into a more marketable 'product.'

2. Mobility.

Adopting a mindset that embraces mobility will motivate your or­ganization to offer you postings outside your division and in other geographical locations.

I am always impressed by a resume that boasts of overseas postings. Not only will you gain greater experience in a foreign country, your perspective of life will also be broader. You stand to gain in both your professional as well as personal life.

In Asia, I see a trend of executives being more amenable to over­seas postings, so long as the family comes along. This is very im­portant. I have seen enough failed marriages to completely dis­courage against relocating without families.

In a business environment where it is very common for three-month postings to be extended progressively to three years, it is poten­tially detrimental to the emotional and psychological well-being of the family for couples to be living in different countries, regardless of how close by those two countries are.

Be ready to accept postings across functions as well. You may not have all the necessary skills and knowledge to handle a different set of responsibilities, fret not. Take up the challenge presented to you, be confident, and give it your best shot. It will value-add your career in the longer term. Your organization would not have offered you the opportunity if they do not feel that you can make it. Hence, take up the challenge with minimum hesitation. Do not, forever, stay within your comfort zone. Take some risks.

3. Hearty appetite for embracing change.

I loathe to repeat this but let me do it anyway. Change is inevitable. Change is constant. Rather than resist it, I strongly suggest that you embrace it and make use of it to enhance your career. Be comfortable and accept that in the world we are living in now, nothing will remain constant. Things will continue to change and evolve.

Look at each change as an opportunity for you to take advantage of. Let me give you an example. One of my outplaced candidates was from a major US telco organization. His boss had moved on and a replacement was brought in. Kiang (the name has been changed to protect the privacy of the candidate) had difficulties in managing the change. He had great hopes of taking over his previous boss' position and his ego suffered a terrible blow when he was not pro­moted.

Instead of accepting and adapting to the working style of the new boss, he fought against the decision. He was being personal al­though his new boss was certainly not to be blamed for his not being promoted. As a matter of fact, his new boss had taken an instant liking and respect for Kiang and saw him as a potential candidate for a new business unit he was tasked to launch.

However, the atmosphere in the office was hostile to say the least. Kiang would openly challenge his new boss, for the sake of doing it. Not only did he do that, he instigated others in the team to do likewise.

Things got to such a terrible state that his new boss found it impos­sible to function effectively with Kiang's noncooperative and dis­ruptive attitude. Despite various counseling sessions, Kiang failed to change. In the end, there was no choice. For the sake of the business, Kiang was sacked so that the business unit could con­tinue to function effectively.

In this specific case, Kiang had failed to adapt to change to his advantage. Had he been mature enough and realized that nothing could be done to reverse the decision of the hiring of his new boss, he could have adopted a more agreeable approach, utilized his experience and knowledge of the organization, and helped his new boss to settle in quicker.

If this approach had been taken, I am quite sure that his new boss would have probably 'taken care' of Kiang by helping him to move up the corporate ladder. In any case, he had the new business unit to set up and who else better to head it than experienced Kiang?

Anyway, it is another sad story of the importance of embracing change and using it to your benefit.

4. What are employability skills - Being Visible

Being visible does not equate to being loud. You do not have to hog the limelight all the time. However, sharpen your presentation and oral skills. When you find the opportunity to get in front of clients or top management, do not shy away from it.

Know you stuff and this will naturally bring you loads of confi­dence. Making presentations is one sure way of being visible. Hone your skills in this department.

As a professional in your own field, get yourself involved with the industry. Volunteer to speak at public seminars. Most times, you may not be paid but I assure you the experience and the exposure will be far more valuable than the monetary incentive of setting aside time to do research and prepare for your presentation.

Pick up from others how to better showcase your presentation ma­terials. The current trend is to prepare your materials in PowerPoint software. For your participants and listeners, let them have a hard copy each of your PowerPoint slides. Leave space next to each of the slides for them to scribble notes during your presentation.

Stage fright? Do not worry, there are many others in the same boat as you. Join a Toastmasters Club. They will give you the opportunity to teach the butterflies in your stomach to fly in formation. And, just to reassure you again, even professional speakers have stage fright. They have learned not to show it too obviously, that's all.

Speaking to an audience of 800 should not be any different from speaking to that of 8. Trust me, I have done this before in a HR seminar in Cebu, the Philippines. From where I was standing on the stage, and with the spotlight shining down on me, I could not really see the faces in the audience. Anyway, once started, you will be so engrossed in delivering your presentation that you will have no time, whatsoever, to be frightened. And, to motivate you to do your best, you have a captured audience!

5. What are employability skills - Customer focus.

The customer is the reason why most, if not all, businesses exist these days. Sadly, there are still some service industry organiza­tions that do not, or choose not to accept this.

I stayed over at a five-star hotel in Hong Kong recently which is not my usual practice. There was a major trade convention and all (seriously) hotels on the Hong Kong island and Kowloon were fully booked. It was pure luck that I was able to find an empty room in this centrally-located hotel.

My stay was relatively pleasant, as would be expected in any major five-star hotel. That is, until check-out time. The cashier perform­ing this role never, during the three to four minutes of transaction time, had any eye contact with me. Neither did she smile or even attempt to communicate with me. The final straw was when she handed me a copy of my bill and walked away. I blew my top! Not even a 'Thank you' - did she realize that it was paying guests like me who pays her monthly salary? Anyway, she received an early Christmas 'present' from me - a lecture on how she had let the hotel down.

Many businesses also make the major mistake of selling what they have to their customers. The correct approach should be to sell the customer what they need for their business to be successful, not what you have to offer. Your business will, in turn, be successful.

6. What are employability skills - Creative thinking.

Thinking outside the box. Employees should try not to take the path of least resistance all the time and execute their responsibili­ties the same way they have always done before.

Find new ways of doing things differently. The common miscon­ception here is that creativity thinking results in earth shattering changes to the way we do things. No, it simply means doing day-to­day activities differently.

In a creative thinking workshop I delivered in Hong Kong in the middle of this year, one human resource manager came up with the brilliant idea of renting her in-house training room to other organi­zations' human resource departments during the days they were not utilized. Thus, bringing in revenue for the department, and the organization. Out-of-the-box and yet a simple idea.

In the same workshop, there were three participants that were over 50 years of age. They were the most participatory of the lot, thus pooh-poohing the general (wrong) perception that creativity was only for the young. One of them even came up with an alternative solution to a matchstick puzzle I gave them to stimulate their crea­tivity juices.

7. Internet savvy.

It is almost a given that the new millennium will see the Internet change many of the ways we do business, live, work, and play. Thus, it is imperative that you strive to learn as much as you can, and also try to keep up with the ever-changing technological won­ders of the Internet.

One way is by reading and following up with the developments in this field. Talking to people in the know would also definitely help.

8. Taking charge.

To survive and do well in the new corporate battlefield, you have to take charge of your career. You need to move it along the direction that will see you maintaining employability rather than focusing on keeping your pants on the seat.

Be more responsible toward your own career management. Start now.

9. Technical/functional expertise.

In all hiring situations, the interviewer will be looking at whether you have what it takes to succeed in performing the duties required of the job they are looking to fill.

Hence, you must adopt a learning mindset and constantly strive to learn, pick up new skills, and keep yourself updated with on-going developments in your particular field of expertise. Failing which, you will not have a great chance of succeeding. An example. The human resource function has been moving steadily towards a strategic role in businesses. In the past, the human re­source manager (or personnel manager, as they were popularly known then) functioned mostly as a service provider. They hire people when they are requested to do so, complete leave records, and perform the likes of such administrative functions.

Since about a decade ago, the human resource manager's role has slowly evolved to one that provides strategic support to the busi­nesses they support. They actively scout and identify talent, and when organizational needs warrant it, recommend to the func­tional managers the hiring of these individuals. They keep 'live' records of the entire organization's talent resources. When the decision to penetrate the enormous China market is taken, they come up with a list of in-house candidates who have the skills and knowledge to best handle a China posting successfully.

The decision to initiate an e-commerce arm of the business is taken. With the push of a couple of buttons on their laptops, the printer begins churning out a list of potential candidates who have recently been sent for hands-on Internet familiarization de­velopment programs, initiated by the human resource department, of course!

Keeping up with functional and technical developments in your field of expertise is a must, rather than something nice to do, when you have the time.

10. Relationship management.

The concept of emotional intelligence has been expounded at great lengths by many an expert. There is also a lot of truth in the view that one's emotional intelligence matters more, much more than one's intelligence quotient (IQ).

Being successful in this world is all about building, managing, and maintaining successful relationships with people. You can never function effectively if you are in isolation.

Building healthy and successful relationships with everyone you come into contact with, even including the humble (but much needed and seldom appreciated) tea lady.