Beyond your degree: skills employers want to see

Dear Coach:

I’m graduating next year with a liberal arts degree.  I’d really like to work for a non-profit company, but I’ll be competing with lots of other grads for the jobs I want.  Any tips?

Waldo in a crowd

Dear Waldo:

You still have time to make yourself a stand-out.  How?  By developing the skills employers in your industry want to see.  Think of skills as capabilities that can be applied directly in the workplace. If for example you mastered excel spreadsheets, many employers would find that skill useful in the workplace. 

To find what those skills are for non-profits, go online and take a look at a site like charityvillage.org.  Then, make a list of the skills 10 employers are asking for.  Look especially at any that are listed more than once.

Now, design a strategy to demonstrate you already have the skills they want – or to develop the skills you’re still sketchy on.

First, look closely at the skills you can already show.  For example, employers site “ability to work effectively in a team.”  You can provide evidence of this skill if, for example, you worked on a project in the inner city with your classmates as part of a sociology course.  Your volunteer experiences probably have also let you develop important skills.

Next, take a look at the skills you don’t have yet.

Some you may be able to teach yourself, like learning the software that’s commonly used in your industry.  Some may involve taking a technical course.  Some may be skills you can develop by doing your own research.  Some may be skills you can only develop by working with other people. 

For example, say you’re a psychology major who eventually wants to work in human resources for a large health organization, like a hospital.  When you look at job ads, you find that they want someone familiar with labour codes and union regulations.  They also want the applicant to know how to use candidate screening software and work well with people from all walks of life and ethnic backgrounds. 

To develop your training strategy, you need to figure out how to meet employers’ skill requirements.

• You know that you can learn labour codes by taking a course or possibly doing research on your own.
• Union regulations are likely to be more job-specific.  You can gain those skills by getting a summer internship in an HR office.  Even if the internship is not in a hospital, working in any large bureaucracy will give you a working knowledge of a unionized environment. 
• To gain skills working with diverse populations, you can volunteer with an organization that helps new immigrants adjust to Canada.
• You can familiarize yourself with applicant screening software by finding out the most frequently used products and how they work.
  

In short, while you can’t claim extensive experience, you can demonstrate that you can take the initiative to develop the skills the employers in your industry value.