Employability Skills Workshop Session Plan
Slide Number & Title
Activity
Slide 1 – Employability Skills Workshop
Holding slide while people arrive
Slide 2 - Introductions
Trainers introduce themselves
Attendees introduce themselves using a speed networking
format or similar
Slide 3 – Today’s Objectives
Slide 4 – What are employability skills?
Go through objectives
Talk through definition
Ask the attendees to brainstorm what attributes/skills they think
relate to employability
Show them the list of employability skills and discuss any
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
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
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
Slide 5 – Employability skills are
Slide 6 – Why do you need them?
Timings
Resources
Required
Training
powerpoint
5mins
20mins (will be
less if less
people)
5mins
5mins
15mins
10mins
20mins
Skills game
5mins
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
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
Again this graph is from the CBI report and illustrates that
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
worksheet. Run through the worksheet as a group identifying
each skill and discuss how they can be linked to the student
ambassador role.
Talk through what employers are looking at when going through
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
application forms. Divide the participants into 5 groups and ask
each group to consider each of the attributes listed on the Airbus
“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
where in the application it asks for them to evidence subject
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
5mins
5mins
Employability
Skills Audit
worksheets
5 mins
5mins
Access to the
internet
10mins
Sample job
applications
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
the more traditional CV and covering letter applications
Slide 11 – How can being a student
volunteer help acquire employability
skills?
Slide 12 – What can STEM Ambassadors
do?
Slide 13 - Next Steps
Consider the job application process including the content of a CV
and covering letter. Look over the covering letter suggestion and
discuss the type of content that should be included in the
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
Sample
covering
letter
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