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Posted Jan. 21, 2015
Postgrad Careers: Where to Learn New Skills
A terrifying fact for you, and one you won’t want to hear as you toil away on your Masters or PhD; in the current work climate, having a postgrad qualification just isn’t enough to make you a great candidate for employment. As more and more people take postgraduate courses to improve their employment prospects and to generally avoid the real world for another few years, your field of competitors gets bigger and bigger.
What employers are looking for now are so-called ‘value added’ elements, work-related skills and achievement you have gained outside of the classroom or workplace. They are doing so for a number of reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, value added skills are exactly that: added value. Given the choice between a postgraduate lawyer and a postgraduate lawyer with a second language, an international law firm will choose the latter. They may never get the chance to use this language, but they always know that it’s there in the case of, say, a massive Portuguese legal crisis.
Secondly, value added skills show commitment and dedication to a chosen field that is extremely attractive in a candidate. Put simply, value added skill is the Ryan Gosling/Cheryl Fernandez-Versini/insert suitably topical attractive person at time of reading of employability. Everyone can say that they are driven and dedicated on their CV, but without the proof to back it up it’s basically wasted resumé space, one of the biggest no-nos for CV writing . Better instead to prove this drive and dedication by attending non-required courses, gaining extra-curricular qualifications and learning the things your course won’t teach you.
So where to find these value added skills? Well, the best place to start can be within your university itself. We’ve written before about why it is essential to join societies while you're in uni, but another great reason is to gain valuable skills. To use my own example, being part of student media at uni I had access to accredited libel training that would have cost be hundreds of pounds to do on my own, and is valuable every day both in my work and when the urge to write snarky comments on Twitter becomes too irresistible. Apart from student media, many others societies also offer value added training course or seminars, particularly those that represent specific industries or subjects. There are even societies that are dedicated to specific value added skills, such as first aid.
For those of you who still don’t know what careers you want to enter into, or people looking for more general skills, why not try learning a language? Not counting employability, the reasons to learn a language are almost countless (though we managed to count the most important five here ). And what’s more, many universities offer language classes either free or at heavily discounted rates to students of their institutions, and offer courses for all levels and languages. So whether you want to tactically learn a language for an emerging world power, or just want to better understand the latest Scandinavian crime drama on BBC4, say bonjour/??/m'athchomaroon! (‘hello’ in the Game of Thrones language dothraki I’m informed) to your uni’s language labs.
Finally, when you’ve exhausted all uni resources or just can’t bear to be on campus for a single minute more (we’ve all had those days. Or years...) you can always search online for courses and classes. A word of warning though; not all online courses are created equally. Thoroughly do your research and ask around before undertaking a course, or you can waste a lot of money on very little, and end up knowing even less. Saying that, the variety of skills you can learn online are infinite, with even the nichest industries represented, so your little bit of reading can be rewarded with exactly the skill you need to set yourself apart.
Although now that we’ve written this and advised more people to get value added skills, soon everyone will have them and you’ll have to do even more to get that crucial job interview. Basically, the message, as ever, is stay in education for as long as humanly possible.
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What employers are looking for now are so-called ‘value added’ elements, work-related skills and achievement you have gained outside of the classroom or workplace. They are doing so for a number of reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, value added skills are exactly that: added value. Given the choice between a postgraduate lawyer and a postgraduate lawyer with a second language, an international law firm will choose the latter. They may never get the chance to use this language, but they always know that it’s there in the case of, say, a massive Portuguese legal crisis.
Secondly, value added skills show commitment and dedication to a chosen field that is extremely attractive in a candidate. Put simply, value added skill is the Ryan Gosling/Cheryl Fernandez-Versini/insert suitably topical attractive person at time of reading of employability. Everyone can say that they are driven and dedicated on their CV, but without the proof to back it up it’s basically wasted resumé space, one of the biggest no-nos for CV writing . Better instead to prove this drive and dedication by attending non-required courses, gaining extra-curricular qualifications and learning the things your course won’t teach you.
So where to find these value added skills? Well, the best place to start can be within your university itself. We’ve written before about why it is essential to join societies while you're in uni, but another great reason is to gain valuable skills. To use my own example, being part of student media at uni I had access to accredited libel training that would have cost be hundreds of pounds to do on my own, and is valuable every day both in my work and when the urge to write snarky comments on Twitter becomes too irresistible. Apart from student media, many others societies also offer value added training course or seminars, particularly those that represent specific industries or subjects. There are even societies that are dedicated to specific value added skills, such as first aid.
For those of you who still don’t know what careers you want to enter into, or people looking for more general skills, why not try learning a language? Not counting employability, the reasons to learn a language are almost countless (though we managed to count the most important five here ). And what’s more, many universities offer language classes either free or at heavily discounted rates to students of their institutions, and offer courses for all levels and languages. So whether you want to tactically learn a language for an emerging world power, or just want to better understand the latest Scandinavian crime drama on BBC4, say bonjour/??/m'athchomaroon! (‘hello’ in the Game of Thrones language dothraki I’m informed) to your uni’s language labs.
Finally, when you’ve exhausted all uni resources or just can’t bear to be on campus for a single minute more (we’ve all had those days. Or years...) you can always search online for courses and classes. A word of warning though; not all online courses are created equally. Thoroughly do your research and ask around before undertaking a course, or you can waste a lot of money on very little, and end up knowing even less. Saying that, the variety of skills you can learn online are infinite, with even the nichest industries represented, so your little bit of reading can be rewarded with exactly the skill you need to set yourself apart.
Although now that we’ve written this and advised more people to get value added skills, soon everyone will have them and you’ll have to do even more to get that crucial job interview. Basically, the message, as ever, is stay in education for as long as humanly possible.
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