Making Yourself Employable for the Future: A Guide
Employability is a difficult concept to pin down. Not only does it mean how you look on paper, but it also means how you act in person – and whether, when viewed holistically, you’re the right person for a given job. In the modern, competitive business era, being employable can get you ahead in life in such a way as to boost your wage, your prospects, and the sheer intrigue you invest in your work. As such, this is an important personal feature to develop – and this article has the answers as to how you’ll make yourself more employable for the future.
Personability
Let’s start with your character. Without charm and a charisma, you’re going to be quite forgettable after interview. Put simply, if you bore your interviewer, they’re going to be thinking about the months and years they’ll share an office with you, and they may well shy away from hiring you on that value alone. Be personable – and that means friendly, interested, charming and smiling, in order to maintain the best chance of being noticed and liked in interview situations.
On Paper
All this is yet to mention how you look on paper, which of course precedes your invitation to any interview. In all jobs, you’re going to have an individual staring at an A4 piece of paper that details all of your skills, your knowledge, your experience, and your achievements. It’s on this piece of paper that you need to sell yourself as much as possible, even if you feel a little uncomfortable doing it. Don’t be shy to exaggerate a little, and to make yourself sound as impressive as you can, as long as you never tell a lie on a resume or a CV.
What to Get on Paper
When your CV or resume is being passed from hand to hand in offices across the land, you might find that, more often than not, it’s being filed in the paper shredder. This is a difficult reality to face, but you have to come to terms with the fact that we’re living in an incredibly highly-skilled work environment, and that others might simply have a better set of skills to you that makes more sense from a hiring perspective. From this insight, though, you’re going to need to work backwards a little in order to make your piece of paper the very best that lands in the in-tray of your superiors. As such, you need to focus on building:
- Skills, by training, learning and onboarding the kinds of talents others possess
- Experience, by taking internships, even if they’re unpaid, at reputable businesses
- Exposure, by getting published or mentioned in journals or in the media
- Achievements, by taking pride in your work and finding ways in which to enter competitions or compete for awards
If you’re able to add such information to your CV or resume, you’ll be able to raise eyebrows from impressed hiring officials across the land, who’ll be excited to interview you and will be hopeful that they’ll onboard you into the role of your choosing.
Studying
There is no doubt that the very best way to make yourself more employable in the modern employment market is to head back to college or university to onboard the skills that’ll make you stand out to hiring officials across the land. It’s here that you should look at the online provisions from educational institutions like SBU.edu, where you can learn how to work in cybersecurity, for instance, by taking an online course that you’ll be able to do alongside your current occupation. Studying for your future career is an excellent way to make your CV grow and blossom, and impress all those who come to read it in the future.
References
Remember that many people come into contact with you over the course of your career, and many of them have positive things to say about your work-rate, your enthusiasm, and your brains. If you’re unable to make the most of these people, by getting their contact details, adding them to your network, and having them down as references, you’ll be missing out on one of the most fundamental things that impresses officials in HR departments up and down the country. Make use, also, of your contacts in order to ask them for specific roles at their own companies, and to leverage your network productively in the ultra-competitive workplace system we currently live under.
All of these tips are designed to help you make more of your career, by enhancing your employability and enabling you to impress hiring officials from the moment they hear your name to the moment they shake your hand.