Academic Skills and Employability: A Comprehensive Report

This report explores the importance of academic skills and employability in achieving success and becoming employable. It discusses different types of skills, including soft and hard skills, and provides a skills analysis through SWOT analysis. The report also includes a personal development plan for enhancing skills.

ACADEMIC REPORT

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Skill.............................................................................................................................................3
Employability skills....................................................................................................................3
Soft and Hard Skills....................................................................................................................4
Skills Analysis.............................................................................................................................5
Personal Development Plan........................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Skill is termed as ability to perform certain task with set outcomes within specified time
and energy with effective use of knowledge. Academic skills helps an individual in achieving
success in with full potential and are developed during studies. These are transferable for future
growth and makes person employable, developing skills is an on-going process (Schech and et.
al., 2017). In this report employability skills are explained along with different types of hard and
soft skills. SWOT Analysis will be done so that Personal Development Plan will be develop to
analyse individuals skills. Academic skills will also be included so that general and specific
abilities will be discussed in development plan.
MAIN BODY
Skill
Skills can be defined as talent or expertise which is required to get employed and perform
specific job and daily activities of job profile. There are different types of skills which helps
individuals to succeed in every aspects of life. Employability skills are abilities which makes an
individual employable with understanding of subject, knowledge and technical skills which helps
in employment activities. Academic skills on the other hand is behaviour which students develop
during education session and leads to development of analytical, creative, problem solving and
communication skills (Cottrell, 2019). Such skills comprises of writing, presentation and
referencing skills along with some complex skills like logical thinking and reflection practise.
Employability skills
These skills helps an individual to outline set which employer wants from them and they
believe that will assist employee to perform effectively in job profile. These skills depends on
attitude, knowledge and technical understanding of individual (Nisha and Rajasekaran, 2018).
There are different types of employability skills that helps an individual to get fit for job profile.
Some of them are as follows:

Inter-Personal Skills: These are related to ability to understand written and spoken text so that
meaningful information can be extracted. This also includes communication skills which helps in
maintaining relations with other employees in organisation.
Problem solving skills: Another employability skill is problem solving which brings ability to
understand problem and then break it into smaller sections so that it can be solved effectively.
This is done with identifying appropriate solutions and implications so that key issues can be
addressed (Clokie and Fourie, 2016).
Team - Working Skills: This provide ability to an individual to work with other employees who
comes from different culture, background, discipline and expertise. This helps to accomplish
team and organisational efforts with collective efforts.
Negotiation Skills: This helps person in expressing requirements so that win – win outcome can
be achieved and organisation is benefited from this deal as well. This helps personnel to
represent organisation in front of outside parties and negotiate so that required position can be
gained (Assiter, 2017.
Soft and Hard Skills
Soft skills: These are inter-personal and character traits which assist individual in building and
maintaining relationships with other. These are complement to hard skills required at workplace
so that personnel is effective in performance. Such skills are important so that employees are
able to work as team, positive connections and accomplish tasks as well (Iyengar, 2015). Some
of them are as follows:
Communication: This also includes verbal communication which is ability to speak
effectively and concisely, non-verbal communication is capacity to react in positive and with
effective expression. Aural communication is termed used to define effective listening and
extracted meaningful information from same, written communication is skill that helps in
composing reports, mails, formal letter, etc. visual communication is involving skills so that
images and visuals aid can be use to gather relevant data with analysis.
Time Management: In order to be effective it is important that employees know how to
manage time according to priorities of tasks and complete them respectively. This skill is known
as time management which helps individuals to recognise essential duties and perform efficiently
so that organisational and personal objectives can be achieved.

Hard Skills: These are more job – specific and need to be present in employee so that they are
employable by organisation. Such skills are acquired by educational sessions, training and
certifications programs and formal coaching. These skills are expected to be required by
personnel and are mentioned in job description so that profile and duties are cleared to
candidates. These are included in resume of individual and need to mention so that there are
higher chances to get employed.
Data Analysis: Such skills are highly valued in organisation as it represent ability to
analyse data so that meaningful information can be extracted for benefit of company (Jones and
et. al., 2017). These are those skills that helps personnel to be effective while dealing with
financial issues and problems of company.
Computer Technology: In current scenario it is important that personnel is able to handle
the technology based machines and equipment. This helps employer to increase performance and
efficiency of teams with the help of different skills like Microsoft Suite, various software and
social media.
Skills Analysis
To analyse skills it is essential to conduct SWOT Analysis so that internal assessment can
be done by individual so that weaknesses can be overcome and personal development plan can
be prepared (Sarsby, 2016). This identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats so
that weakness are mitigate with helps of skills.
Strengths: This represents skills and abilities that an individual possess and helps them to
perform effectively in organisation. These identify talent and ability which ensures employability
of personnel.
 One of the biggest skill that I posses is communication skills that helps me to be effective
listener and maintain relations with employees.
 Another soft skill that I have is managing time which I learned during academic sessions
by submitting my assignments on time.
 I am effective in using computer related technology and inter-personal skills which helps
me to be efficient in getting employ by organisation.

 I have worked with teams during my educational session which has helped me to gain
team working related knowledge and skills.
 I am effective in inter-personal skills which helps me to build relations in academic
sessions and retain same in organisation with employees.
Weaknesses: This section will identify weaknesses that will hinder my employability and
academic skills and need to be over come so that it does not become threat for future career.
 I lack in written communication which is one of my weaknesses that will going to hinder
my formal reporting in organisation.
 Another weaknesses that I have is area of problem solving in which I lack as there are
instances while working in team that conflicts has arises and I was not able to solve them.
 The area where I lack is negotiation skills as many times while working with team I
always faced issues in expressing my views and in making other understand the same.
Opportunities: These are the scope for improvement by which an individual can develop their
skills and abilities.
 I can gain higher knowledge about the written communication in the organisation so that
I become effective in communicating policies and procedures.
 Another scope for me is to sorry problems and develop the skills related to it so that it
affects my performance as a team leader
 There is a need to enhance my negotiation skills as well so that it becomes easy for me to
express my views and gain win-win situation for the organisation as well.
Threats: This will show the negative impact of the lacking of skills for an individual in the
future while performing job roles (Addams and Allred, 2015).
 If I was not able to enhance my written communication according to the organisation for
Mark I will not be able to be effective in communicating policies and procedures.
 Problem solving skills help and personnel in solving conflicts and managing employees
as well. In case if I will be lacking this skills Will hinder my conflict management rules.
 Negotiation helps in taking advantage and giving advantage from the outside parties for
the benefit of organization. In order if I like in this skill will decrease the profitability and
productivity for the organization.

Personal Development Plan
this analyse activities and processes by which an individual can enhance its skills for future
growth and development (PLANNING, 2018).
Skills Improvement activities Time period
Negotiation skills For this I need to take up
online courses and seminars
so that I can get complete
knowledge about how to
dominate and influence the
conversation with the outside
parties. This will also help me
to express my views and
opinions in front of others
and also helps organization to
get a benefit out of
negotiation.
2 months
Problem solving skills this will help me to analyse
the situation and big decision
accordingly so that
appropriate actions can be
taken in the case of conflicts
and issues in the organisation.
Employees will be satisfied is
the decisions are given
according to the situation
after analysing the
circumstances. This will also
help organisations to retain
employees for the longer time
and have friendly working
environment which is fair and
3months

just for all the workers.
Communication skills For this I need to take up
seminars and training so that
I can enhance my written
skills according to the
organizational format so that
I am effective in
communicating to upper and
lower level of management.
This will also help me to
build and maintain
relationship with the
employees so that they can be
motivated to work more
productively in order to
achieve organizational
objectives as well (Gould,
2017).
1months
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded from the above report that skills at a certain ability which helps an individual
to perform effectively in the organisation and bring results for personal and professional growth.
Academic skills are learned during the educational session which helps In personal growth and
become employable in the future. SWOT Analysis Will help an individual to find out its strength
and weaknesses so that it have an opportunity to grow it in near future. Respective states are also
identified so that in order to lacking in any skills will show the outcomes. Personal development
plan will help an individual to develop its skills in which it is lacking and become more
employable for the organisation.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Addams, L. H. and Allred, A. T., 2015. Business communication course redesigned: All written
and oral communication assignments based on building career skills. Academy of
Educational Leadership Journal. 19(1). p.250.
Assiter, A., 2017. Transferable skills in higher education. Routledge.
Clokie, T. L. and Fourie, E., 2016. Graduate employability and communication competence: Are
undergraduates taught relevant skills?. Business and Professional Communication
Quarterly. 79(4). pp.442-463.
Cottrell, S., 2019. The study skills handbook. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Gould, J., 2017. Career development: A plan for action. Nature. 548(7668). pp.489-490.
Iyengar, R. V., 2015. MBA: The soft and hard skills that matter. IUP Journal of Soft Skills. 9(1).
p.7.
Jones, M. and et. al., 2017. The hard truth about soft skills: What recruiters look for in business
graduates. College Student Journal. 50(3). pp.422-428.
Nisha, S. M. and Rajasekaran, V., 2018. Employability skills: A review. IUP Journal of Soft
Skills. 12(1). pp.29-37.
PLANNING, C., 2018. Personal Development Plan.
Sarsby, A., 2016. SWOT analysis. Lulu. Com.
Schech, S. and et. al., 2017. Simulating the global workplace for graduate employability. Higher
Education Research & Development. 36(7). pp.1476-1489.