This week, I will be sharing useful tips in a series of Blog posts about improving your Employability Skills during COVID. I will be posting one each day so be sure to look out for my other tips.
It can certainly be a challenging and difficult time for everyone, but we can use this time to do more to work on our employability skills. There are several employability skills employers are looking for, such as:
-Team work
-Problem Solving
-IT/Numeracy Skills
-Communication
-Confidence
-Time management
-Decision Making
These skills would usually be listed on a person specification and will be something that employees will want to ask you about during an interview. Whilst the situation may be daunting and create a lot of uncertainties, as an individual you can use the time to learn and develop new skills. Here’s a list of things you can do to improve your employability skills during COVID.
1. Before you start, make sure you have a CV and that it is updated to save time later when you want to add to it
Now is the perfect time to create your CV, if you haven’t already done so, and ensure that it is up to date with all the relevant information. You can try and condense it and organise it so that you can use it when applying for opportunities. The last thing you want to be doing is panicking and trying to add all the information all in one go. There are several templates that you can use but remember that you need to make your CV stand-out from the crowd. Employers will look at your CV and try to build a picture of you from that, so it is important you spend time planning this and make it look professional. Doing this can also help you to audit yourself and see what areas you might want to develop and what skills you might want to learn.
2. Create a plan of how you can spend your time and find a balance between studying, working and free time
One of the most important things to do is deciding what you want to do with your time. You may find that you struggle to find a balance between studying, working and doing other activities in your free time. The first thing you should try and do is to create a schedule and note down what you currently do during a weekday. You might not have a routine but if you don’t then it would be good to start one. You can simply create a schedule where you set aside time for all your activities, such as lunch and breaks, studying, working, free time. Working/ Studying from home might give you the temptation to have the TV on in the background, so that you can watch the latest episodes of your favourite shows, but it’s important to focus on studying or working without the distractions. It can also be quite easy to fill your schedule with work or studying, but you should set aside some time in your schedules for other activities during your free time where you can focus on improving your health, both mental and physical. Scheduling and planning can show great skills of time-management and self-management and indicates that you haven’t just woken up each day and done whatever you want without any consideration.
To find out more about what you can do and how to make the most of the opportunity, head over to the Work Fitness Centre and be sure to attend the Bootcamps, taking place next week.
Current student? These sessions are open to all current students from Pearson Business School and Escape Studios students. Sign up on the Work Fitness Centre in the Student Portal!
Prospective student? Watch this space to get an insight into how our students found the activities, as we’ll be sharing their stories on here shortly, to give you a taste of what you can look forward to if you choose to study with us :)
