Key workplace competencies
Skills or competencies that help you get and then keep a job.
Key workplace competencies are important for all students, not just those going directly into work after leaving school. These competencies are diverse and can include specialist or technical skills, work readiness skills, and more general ‘soft’ people and relationship management skills.
Employability skills build on the key competencies in The New Zealand Curriculum to help students understand how these competencies ‘look and feel’ in the workplace. Workplace competencies are best developed in authentic contexts, like work experience, however, there a range of ways to contextualise learning and introduce the world of work into the curriculum from year 7. Your school Careers Advisor is a good place to start for ideas about how to do this.
Employability Skills | Ngā Pūkenga Whai Mahi
In 2016 a group of government agencies, business and education sector representatives worked together to develop a common understanding of what key soft or relationship management skills are in the work place. Their work was developed and tested with a range of potential users, including secondary students, employers, secondary teachers, careers advisers, and employment case managers.
The employability skills they identified are:
- A positive attitude | Waiaro pai
- Communication | Whitiwhiti kōrero
- Team work | Mahi ngātahi
- Self-management | Whakahaere-whaiaro
- Willingness to learn | Ngā pūkenga whaakaro
- Thinking skills | He hiahia ki te ako
- Resilience | Pakaritanga.
More detailed descriptions of these skills can be found at Employability Skills Framework and Pou Tarāwaho Pūkenga Whai Mahi. You can find posters, templates and activity sheets on Employability Skills for educators and students on the Careers NZ website.
Why are employability skills important?
Getting a job is about more than just having the right qualifications. Although this is important, employers are looking for people that have a variety of skills, not just school results. Often called ‘employability skills’, these include things like having a positive attitude that employers say are important for employees in their workplace.
Employability skills can be learnt by doing activities not only in school but also out of it. For example, a young person playing for a local rugby team can help improve and demonstrate teamwork, or joining a class to learn a new language can showing a willingness to learn. Students won't necessarily need all of the employability skills to get a job, but they will help prove to a potential employer the value they can bring to their business.
Work readiness skills
These are skills that relate directly to the employment process. For example, how to write a CV, job search strategies, job interview skills, and having the right approach and presentation for the sector a student wishes to work in.
Specialist or technical skills
These are skills specific to the industry students wish to work in. They are often referred to as ‘hard skills’ and are specific skills that a chosen industry might require of someone prior to employment, or they might support them to gain these skills early in their employment. Examples of these skills could be knowledge of materials, production processes, quantities and costs, or skills in understanding the role of a support worker and the rights of customers.
The combination of these three types of skills are very important during the recruitment process and will greatly increase the likelihood of a young person getting a job and starting a career. Employability skills and work readiness fit alongside a student’s qualifications and references to help give the employer a broader understanding of who they are and how they might fit in the workplace.
Employers also emphasise that they assume students are proficient in literacy, language and numeracy and can apply this in a workplace. When considering employability skills at higher levels of a career, the employer assumes that technical knowledge and skills are relevant and up-to-date with current industry practices.