Analysis of Employability Skills and Professional Development Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of employability skills and professional development. It begins by defining employability skills and professional development, emphasizing their importance for career success. The main body of the report addresses key questions, including methods for improving learning and performance skills, such as classroom practices, higher education, and continuous learning. It also identifies and analyzes tools and techniques for enhancing interpersonal and transferable skills, like e-learning, podcasting, and the internet. Furthermore, the report details the process of devising and critically reviewing a personal and professional development (PPD) plan, including a skill audit and an action plan for improvement. The conclusion highlights the significance of employability skills and personal development for an individual's career progression. This report is a valuable resource for students seeking to enhance their skills and plan for their professional future.

Employability Skills and
Professional Development
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Q1. Organising as well as detailing ways for improving own learning as well as Performance
key skills for work.......................................................................................................................3
Q2. Identification along with analysing tools addition to techniques for enhancing
interpersonal as well as transferable skills...................................................................................5
Q3. Devising along with critically reviewing personal and professional development plan......6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10
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INTRODUCTION
The term employability skills could be defined to transferable abilities that are required
by a student for being employable (Chowdhury and Miah, 2016). These are key for success of an
individual in career and workplace. Similarly, professional development is represented to a
learning for earning addition to maintaining professional credentials including informal
improvement opportunities, academic degrees for formal coursework and hence forth. The
purpose related to the assessment of employability skills and professional development is to
upgrade level of knowledge, competence, skill sets, etc for facilitating improvements for
fostering achievements of a student.
The assessment is based in questions that are detailed ways to improve self-learning and
performance skills for working. It also analyse tools and techniques for the purpose of enhancing
interpersonal and transferable skills and critically reviews PPD plan.
MAIN BODY
Q1. Organising as well as detailing ways for improving own learning as well as Performance key
skills for work
Learning is a process for acquiring new values, understanding, preferences, knowledge and
attitudes for work. Learning skill is defined to the tasks which are involved in learning such as
note taking, writing tests, time management, reading effectively and so on. Similarly,
performance skills refers to observable elements of activities which have implicit functional
purpose (Gjedia and Gardinier, 2018). These skills keeps mind of an individual engaged along
with body active. Moreover, improving these skill helps in getting new knowledge based
perspectives about the world which revolves around a person. Being an undergraduate employee,
these skills are significant for me to gain new experiences, keeping neutral pathways active and
training the brain for handling wide challenges. There are various ways to enhance their learning
and performance skills that are related to work. Some of them are as organised and detailed out:
Classroom practices: It is a way that comprises multiple agents along with their
interactions in a class room to improve knowledge and skills related to learning along with
performance. It is manifested in diverse structures and formats in which various students take
part to gain new experiences and personalities that are essential for work. For an undergraduate
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student, classroom practice is one of effective way to enhance their learning and performance
skills that are required for workings. In classroom practice, a student participates in activities
such as presentation, communication, critical thinking, note making and many more that
develops skills for performing in a company.
Higher Education: It is a tertiary education which results to award a person of an
academic degree (Knox and Stone, 2019). A higher education permits a student to pursue a
career which interests along with inspires them. It provides an opportunity to undergraduate
student to meet their socio-cultural as well as development requirements of performance skills at
work to maximum potentials. Moreover, higher education is crucial for all students as it
improves learning together with development skills with cultural and material developments.
Continue learning: It is a great way to improvise learning and performance by being
committed for own professional development. An undergraduate student takes interest in
learning in best possible manner they can about their roles, company, industry and topics in
which they are interested to realise benefits of improving learning and performance based skills.
Not only continued learning assist a student in learning new skills as well as improving current
ones, it builds bank of knowledge which is further applied to work role or performances at
organisation. For instance, through reading about concept of productivity, a student determine an
ineffective procedure at work that helps in saving themselves along with other durations by
machining necessary improvements.
Using wider variants of resources: Use of multiple resources is crucially more effective
from utilising individual resource for developing learning and performance skills. For an
undergraduate student, it is best way to gain different contexts or perspective about requirements
and implications of variety of skills for work (Kohli, 2019). Furthermore, anything which
provides a student with different perspective of ideas, thought, problem and theory results in
enhancing their learning and performance skills. At same time, use of various resources provides
different analogies and associations. As per the opinion of a student, it is certainly one of most
effective way to improve learning by using various resources or more abstracted subjects that
develops performances for work in future. It also makes improvisation of skills more enjoyable
as by repetition and variation, a person learns better with active engagement and perform it
effectively within their workplace.
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From the discussed ways or methods, an undergraduate student gains success in improving
their own learning together with performance skills that are essential for work.
Q2. Identification along with analysing tools addition to techniques for enhancing interpersonal
as well as transferable skills
Interpersonal and transferable skills are the tactics and behaviours which are used by an
individual for interaction with others along with variety of occupations or roles in effective
manner (Martínez-Cerdá, Torrent-Sellens and González-González, 2020). These are the abilities
that an undergraduate student learns or enhance throughout their life by making maximum use of
various tools and techniques. The skill set is relevant across all workplaces addition to
workplaces. Moreover, these are developed or taken for embarking towards new career paths.
Some of techniques and tools that helps undergraduate student to enhance interpersonal and
transferable skills are as identified and analysed;
E-learning: It is an effective technique to enhance skill set among students and people for
working practices. In other words, it is a learning through electronic technologies for accessing
educational curriculum outside traditional classroom. By using the technique, an undergraduate
student is able to enhance its interpersonal and transferable skills as it involves two way
communication that makes them specialised to interact with others and work in various roles top
gain success in career.
Pod casting: It is another technique that plays prominent role in enhancing transferable
and interpersonal skills within an individual (Meyers, 2017). Pod casting is a technique of
integrating audio files in one a person can feed their own materials as well as play it outside the
classroom. It is used in form of i-Pods for hearing important information. In same manner, an
undergraduate student have their education in kind of entertainment that results in enhancing
various interpersonal and transferable skills including listening skills, verbal communication
skill, analytical skill, collaboration skill and many more. The technique allows an undergraduate
student to make usage of tech-based entertainment systems for the purpose of enhancing skill
sets related to transferable and interpersonal aspects.
Internet: It is commonly acknowledged term along with widely accepted by people across
the globe for improving their interpersonal and transferable skills. In case with a graduate
student, in modern era, they uses Internet in class and other locations to learn various languages,
communicate with population sitting at different parts of world, listen others and so on. It is an
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interesting tool which helps student to find out suitable materials to improve the skills. They are
instructed for doing grammar exercises and having verbal or written communications online with
others. Moreover, by using the tool, students are able to collect required materials from various
sources to enhance their skill sets (Nisha and Rajasekaran, 2018).
With these techniques and tools, it becomes possible for an undergraduate student to
enhance their interpersonal addition to transferable skills in best possible and convenient aspects.
Q3. Devising along with critically reviewing personal and professional development plan
Personal and professional development plan refers to a document which reflects objectives
to develop further planning (Nudelman, 2020). It is a process with the help of which an
individual gets involved in learning for meeting desires goals about their personal and
professional life. To devise PPD plan, first skill audit is done to analyse what skills needs further
improvements. The skill audit for an undergraduate student is as follows:
Personal skill audit
It is an effective mechanism through which an individual determines his or her own
strengths and requirements within healthy atmosphere. An undergraduate student have objective
of working in a multinational company. The personal skill audit is conducted to analyse which
skills are good and which needs further developments or improvements (Roussy and Brivot,
2016). The personal skill audiot of the student is as follows:
Good Average Po
Skills Rating
Communication skills
Financing skills
Conflict management skills
IT skills
Interpersonal skills
Critical thinking abilities
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Time management skills
Adaptability skills
Organising skills
Personal and professional development plan
On the basis of above skill set, personal and professional development plan is devised for
those skills that are categorised under average and poor element. For a graduate student, PPD
plan is as follows:
Objective Action Plan Resource required Time frame
To improve
financial skill
To make my existing financial
skill improved, I will start thinking
as an investor, emphasis towards
key metrics, learn to manage cash
flows, know day to day cost,
participate in financial literacy
classes, watch financial
information TV offerings and use
various techniques to learn about
financial accountings as well as
concepts.
For the purpose of
improving financial
skill, required resources
includes educational
programs and materials,
financial literacy self-
assessment quiz,
financial goal calculator
and budget calculator
(Thomas and Vavrus,
2019).
40 days
To develop
adaptability skill
Adaptability skills are essential to
perform in any organisation. An
undergraduate student will change
my thought procedures, force
myself into taking risks, embrace
learnings, motivate others for
being open minded, accept more
challenges, expand my
comfortable zone and learn from
my own mistakes (Succi and
For developing my
adaptability skill, I need
resources such as
entrepreneurial eBooks,
business plan templates,
webinars, diary,
laptops, online courses
and reading materials
on adaptability.
55 days
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Canovi, 2020).
To improvise
critical thinking
abilities
Critical thinking ability is a
potential to analyse facts for
forming judgement (Oluwalola,
2019). For the purpose of
improving my critical thinking
abilities, I will adjust my
perspectives, develop foresights,
always think about improvements,
analyse my failures addition to
mistakes, use mind maps, practice
active listening, evaluate current
competences and become self-
aware.
For critical thinking
ability, essential
resources required for
improvisation are
internet, fun web
games, holistic scoring
rubric, sample
questions, reasoning
books and podcasting.
30 days
From the above PDP plan, it is reviewed that an undergraduate student requires various
skills for attaining success throughout the career. Some of the essential skills are Communication
skills, IT skills, Critical thinking abilities, Adaptability skills, Conflict management skill,
Organising skill, Interpersonal skill, financing skill, Time management skill and many more.
Among all, the skills in which I am good are communication, IT, conflict management, time
management, organising and interpersonal as I communicate with others without any hesitation,
have knowledge about various IT related tools or software, completes all working within time
and prioritise various operations to organise resources together. However, I reviewed that my
some skills are on average or poor which I needs to develop for my professional career. The
skills are critical thinking, financial and adaptability. For developing these, I have drafted a
action plan and list out resources that will assist be in attaining. As an undergraduate student, I
will try or make possible actions to achieve or improve all within stipulated duration.
CONCLUSION
From the discussion, it is concluded that employability skills addition to personal development
are essential factors in career of an individual. Employability skills are job readiness abilities
which are mandatory for each job along with seen as essential attitudes which permits a person to
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develop themselves in their career efficiently. Personal development assist to improve abilities
and competences to learn throughout the life. It is a continuous development which keeps skill
sets of people up to date together with ensures to perform legally, ethically, enthusiasm and
safely. Classroom practices, higher Education, continue learning and using wider variants of
resources are some of ways to improve learning and performance skills. E-learning, Pod casting
and Internet are certain types of tools addition to techniques that enhances transferable and
interpersonal skills. Personal and professional development plan acts as a framework which
makes people recognising their own strengths and weaknesses together with directs them to take
essential actions for capitalising current capabilities for future occupation.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Chowdhury, T. A. and Miah, M. K., 2016. Employability skills for entry-level human resources
management positions: Perceptions of students and employers. Australian Journal of
Career Development. 25(2). pp.55-68.
Gjedia, R. and Gardinier, M. P., 2018. Mentoring and teachers’ professional development in
Albania. European Journal of Education. 53(1). pp.102-117.
Knox, J. and Stone, M., 2019. Embedding employability skills for the legal professionals of the
future. The Law Teacher. 53(1). pp.90-101.
Kohli, R., 2019. Lessons for teacher education: The role of critical professional development in
teacher of color retention. Journal of Teacher Education. 70(1). pp.39-50.
Martínez-Cerdá, J. F., Torrent-Sellens, J. and González-González, I., 2020. Socio-technical e-
learning innovation and ways of learning in the ICT-space-time continuum to improve
the employability skills of adults. Computers in Human Behavior. 107. p.105753.
Meyers, B., 2017. The Development of Employability Skills Through an Experiential Learning
Approach. Union University.
Nisha, S.M. and Rajasekaran, V., 2018. Employability skills: A review. IUP Journal of Soft
Skills. 12(1). pp.29-37.
Nudelman, G., 2020. The hidden curriculum in two employability skills development courses in
a South African electrical engineering degree programme. Journal of Education and
Work, pp.1-15.
Oluwalola, F. K., 2019. Business Studies and Employability Skills Development in Junior
Secondary Schools in Ilorin Metropolis, Kwara State. eJEP: eJournal of Education
Policy.
Roussy, M. and Brivot, M., 2016. Internal audit quality: a polysemous notion?. Accounting,
Auditing & Accountability Journal
Succi, C. and Canovi, M., 2020. Soft skills to enhance graduate employability: comparing
students and employers’ perceptions. Studies in Higher Education. 45(9). pp.1834-1847.
Thomas, M. A. and Vavrus, F. K., 2019. The Pluto problem: Reflexivities of discomfort in
teacher professional development. Critical Studies in Education, pp.1-16.
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