Examples of Employability Skills and Why They Are Important

Employability skills are a very loose group of transferable skills that are the most basic arguments for an employer to hire a person. They’re not job-specific skills—rather the general characteristics that make a proficient and productive employee. In short, these are the skills all employers look for.

Strong employability skills make up the bulk of requirements for entry-level and less technical jobs. But at any level, lack of them will block your entry and advancement, because nobody wants bad employees, even if they have strong skill sets.

This guide will teach you how to make your quality as an employee shine right off the page.

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Employability skills on a CV example

Types of Employability Skills

Everyone has some degree of employability skills, since they are broad soft transferable skills. The trick is in putting them across on paper. To do that effectively, first you have to understand what components a perfect employee is made up of. Here are the top 10 employability skills you should master.

1. Interpersonal skills

Getting along with others is a basic preamble to any position. Building rapport, good relationships, and trust through being friendly, honest, and having integrity—makes a member invaluable to any team. 

2. Communication

Communication skills may link to interpersonal skills, but also pertain to all other types of communicating: presenting and writing, etc. Making sure your message is consistent between words, tone and body language. This comes innately to some—others will have to learn. 

3. Problem solving

Following a consistent and logical framework through identifying the problem, analysing the facts, and working towards a productive and realistic solution is something that not everyone can do. Problem solvers increase effectiveness and efficiency, which makes them worth their weight in gold.

 4. Teamwork

Some people don’t want to pull their weight. Others want to do everything themselves because they’re caught up in their ego, thinking they’re ‘perfectionists.’ Neither of these things are positives for an organisation. Learning how to work with others to achieve goals with maximum efficiency is an important skill indeed. Being able to work in a team is something that’s valuable in almost every role in every industry. 

5. Time management

Scheduling, prioritisation, assertiveness, and having a tried method to focus when it’s crunch time—that’s what meets deadlines and makes managers happy. Saying ‘no’ to distractions and overloading work may be difficult, but is necessary. 

6. Organisational skills

Some people believe in creative chaos, but consistently getting the job done requires an organisational method that allows you to easily find, amend and share work. It helps with time management too.

7. Conflict resolution

There must be someone with diplomacy skills in every workplace, otherwise it devolves into cliques, hurt egos, and a generally bad atmosphere. Being assertive and respectful to solve issues before they become problems will ensure you a strong position in the company.

8. Receiving feedback

Everyone’s natural response to criticism is defence. Being rooted in ego, excessive pride or insecurity about your work will completely disable your ability to improve. Treat every criticism as a chance to improve—and you will. 

9. Leadership

Knowing when and how to take charge and steer the team in the right direction is priceless. By listening, understanding and knowing your team, you will be able to lead them to success every time. Leadership is much more than mere management, it’s about getting people onboard with your vision to help achieve goals, not just mere administration. 

10. Resilience

You don’t have to be made of stone, but having the resilience to take challenges in your stride is one of the top employability skills. People and situations can be difficult, but handling those difficulties with aplomb and maintaining a level head are the marks of a valuable employee and colleague.

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How to include examples of employability skills on your CV

Now that you know what the components of a perfect employee are, it’s time to talk about how to write a CV that makes that shine right off the page. Your CV structure may differ slightly depending on industry and experience, but you cannot do without these sections.

1. Start with your CV profile

The CV personal statement, aka CV summary, must adorn the top of every worthy CV. It simply needs to be included in your CV—it allows the recruiter a quick skim-read of what you’re about, and an incentive to read on. So don’t wait until later to start selling your employability skills. 

Employability skills in the CV summary

2. List strong employability skills in your job description

The meat of your CV is the work experience section. Your CV needs to be one-page in most cases, so here’s where you need to fit your key employability skills. These CV tips provide a foolproof method:

• Start by writing out all the top 10 employability skills. Provide a real-world example of you leveraging this skill for success, including achievements and numbers.
• Analyse the job posting to understand which skills are the most important to your employer, and focus the hardest on those.
• You may not have an example for each bullet point, some may be better combined, and others will just go in the bin entirely. Don’t worry, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
• No less than 5 bullet points for your most recent job.
• No more than 3 bullet points for older positions.

Job description with employability skills

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3. Add an education section

How you plug your employability skills in your CV education section depends on your experience. If you have several years of work experience, nobody cares about the modules you took at university.

But for student CVs, you have to get some impact out of your education section. You could talk about relevant modules or some extracurricular activities that could have fostered employability skills.

Employability skills in the education section

4. Add your skills section

The CV skills section is your ability to add supplementary skills that didn’t quite make the cut with their own bullet point, but you think they could help you out. Follow this formula to make sure you get it right every time.

• Analyse what the employer needs in the job posting for the most important skills to put on your CV.
• Either add an approximately 5-long list of supplementary skills, or a couple of skills with 2-3 sentences of elaboration.
• Adjust your CV to each position you’re applying for.
• Shoot for a good balance between soft skills and hard skills. 

Employability skills in the skills section

5. Include additional sections

A person writing the perfect CV ends as strong as they started. They don’t add a jumbled ‘Additional Info’ section. They split their Languages, Certificates, Awards, and a Hobbies and Interests section separately—and they only include what’s important. 

Employability skills in the extra sections

What else to remember about when putting employability skills on your CV?

The importance of employability skills is growing because an increasing skills gap means increasing financial risks for employers. A lack of employability skills is estimated to cost businesses across the UK an additional £6.3 billion per year.

So showing you’ve got good employability skills instantly makes you a more attractive proposition to employers.

Luckily, there are free resources to make sure you’re up to speed, such as the government’s Skills Toolkit—which contains courses for both hard skills, and soft employability skills.

You must also write a cover letter. An application is incomplete without one. It gives you around 250-400 words to show exactly how employable you are! Good luck at the interview.

A cover letter alone simply won’t be enough—you need an impactful CV, too. Create your CV in minutes. Just follow our wizard and fill in every CV section with ready-made content. Get started by choosing a professional CV template.

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If you’re still in need of more examples of employability skills for CVs, or you don’t understand why employability skills are important, then let us know in the comments section. We’re here to help.

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Our editorial team has reviewed this article for compliance with Livecareer’s editorial guidelines. It’s to ensure that our expert advice and recommendations are consistent across all our career guides and align with current CV and cover letter writing standards and trends. We’re trusted by over 10 million job seekers, supporting them on their way to finding their dream job. Each article is preceded by research and scrutiny to ensure our content responds to current market trends and demand.