Skills for Higher Education: Essential Skills for Success and CV Tips

This report identifies essential skills students need to succeed in higher education, including leadership, time management, teamwork, computer skills, and motivation, highlighting their importance in both academic and workplace settings. It further provides six recommendations for improving CV content, such as including a personal statement, proofreading for grammatical errors, highlighting skills and knowledge, creating a compelling cover letter, and tailoring the CV to meet specific job requirements. The report concludes that acquiring these skills and crafting an effective CV are crucial for personal, academic and professional growth, and for catching the interest of potential employers.

Skills for Higher
Education

ABSTRACT
There are different set of skills and knowledge which must be acquired by the students in
order to grow personally and professionally. The student must acquire different skills which will
help in both academic as well as employment era. These skills include time management, team
work, motivation, computer and many others. CV plays an essential role in the employment
phase and it must be attractive enough to catch interest of employer. There are few
recommendations to improve CV which includes having personal statement, cover letter,
checking grammatical errors , etc. Hence, with the help of these, there can be attractive CV
which can help in achieving growth opportunities.

Contents
ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION...................................................................................................4
Identify six skills that students require to be successful at university and discuss why they are
also important in the workplace...................................................................................................4
Provide six recommendations that could help students improve the content of their CVs.........6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Higher education can be referred to as that phase of the life wherein the individual adopts
the ability to learn to such extent which can help in the future development of career. It mainly
offers a gateway to many opportunities in the future as it works as a door that opens up different
and miscellaneous pathways by way of which an individual can enhance the living standard by
studying in the higher classes. Academic skills are considered as an essential element wherein
the student is engaged in the higher education and learns new skills which can help not only in its
academic life but also prepares itself for the future career by making it an efficient learner. These
skills help in boosting morale of the students and also increases the competence level and self–
esteem of the people. The good set of skills also helps in brining improvement in the learning
ability of the student and contributes in retaining knowledge (Beagon, Niall and Ní Fhloinn,
2019). This report shall cover the skills which is needed in higher education and various
recommendation in order to improve CV.
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
Identify six skills that students require to be successful at university and discuss why they are
also important in the workplace.
The development of the new skills contributes in the ability of student to figure out effective
and new ways of resolving the issues or problems. It helps in recognizing the impact of their
actions and contributes in teaching them to take new responsibilities (Vanacker, Demedts and
Van Puyenbroeck, 2018). Different skills which a student must acquire in the university are
illustrated below together with their importance at workplace:
 Leadership: The good leader has the ability to bring the best from the team members by
way of motivating and guiding them to work together in order to accomplish the shared
objectives. Leaders are well-organized as they keep records of the team in order to make
them focused towards the work so that it is completed on time. This will shall help the
students in the University to learn different art to build and maintain the healthy
relationship with the members and defines their identities so that task is accomplished
effectively (Heron and Palfreyman, 2019). In the same way, when this skill is developed
during the employment phase, the individual can take more opportunities by way of
motivating team in order to achieve goals.

 Time management: It is that skill which must bring discipline and punctuality in the
students. It helps the students to prioritise the activity, work and task in order to
accomplish task on time. When the time is managed efficiently, the door of opportunities
is open which helps in personal and professional development. At university level, when
the student acquires this skill, it is able to work on time so that its focus is built and
distractions are prevented. Similarly, at employment phase, this skill helps in the
streamlining of the decision making in order to prevent “paralysis by analysis”. It also
helps in meeting the deadlines with no pressure.
 Team work: This skill is the one which helps in doing things in efficient and faster
manner. It involves dividing the work among the members so that the sense of comradery
is developed that helps in moving forward to the goals. It builds the morale and
confidence of people as they get to work together and help in each whenever needed. At
the workplace, this skill helps in building cooperation, coordination and communication
so that personal and professional development is done and work is done with the ideas of
varied personality and ability (Idrus, 2017).
 Computer skills: This is the technological era wherein it has become important for
students to learn this skill so that the work is done without the manual support in
efficient, quicker and faster manner. it is important that there must be literacy in the
computers during employment time so that the problems are staved off in very short time
period and also makes the working easy. Similarly, at university, this skill helps in
processing and presenting information in easy manner. In today’s time, this skill shall
help in the employment opportunities as well as career growth.
 Motivation: There must be the ability in every student to motivate others as it is the
significant factor that increases the person’s performance. There are different ways in
which the individual can motivate others and it is crucial to identify it so that the
competency can be developed and the behaviour of people can be changed so that the
new targets are set and the things can be planned in order to boost engagement. At the
time of employment phase, this skill will help in bringing out the best from all and at
workplace, it will help in driving emergency and commitment so that there is enhanced
productivity which will help in accomplishing goals (McDougall and Holden, 2017).

Provide six recommendations that could help students improve the content of their CVs.
In today’s era, it is very difficult to get the dream job with Steller grade and in order to get
it, it is essential to put on some of the extra efforts so that one can stand out from the crowd.
Some recommendation for brining improvement in the CV are as follows-
 Include the personal statement: There must be a good personal statement in the CV
whereby it should be kept short and concise and also highlight level of experience,
personal and professional qualities, skills and many other aspects which can make the
individual job fit. It is basically the concise paragraph or summary that consist of details
of candidate, namely the opening statement (Vdovina and et. al., 2019). There must be
knowledge of the same to student as it is being climbing the ladder of career so that the
personal statement can warrant the knowledge and experience of the candidate.
Therefore, the personal statement of student must stand apart from the crowd.
 Proofread CV to check errors of grammar: It is one of the essential aspect in order to
improve the CB wherein the student must proofread its CV after preparing it so that the
grammatical errors can be corrected. Errors can result in damaging probability of a
student to land into the interview. When CV is send to other party an extra pair of eyes is
provided in order to look for problems which cannot be identified by the writer. Proof
read by other person can make it more effective and impressive (Ramon-Casas and et. al.,
2019).
 High skill and knowledge: There must be the proper set of knowledge and skill which
the candidate must possess as it may be easy for it to target new job. It helps in attracting
attention of employer. A separate section of the skills, traits and knowledge must be
present relating to work so that professional experience can be gained. The relevant and
best skill should be weaved in profile of CV so that it can justify its selection for job role
(van Rensburg and Piper, 2019). Moreover, a proper template must be used wherein the
knowledge and learning is highlighted so that job position can be reflected. The words
like ‘expert level of the understanding’, ‘extensive knowledge’, etc. must be used so that
expert skills are indicated.
 Good cover letter: It is referred to as a written document that is being submitted together
with the application of job that outlines credentials of applicant. It is mainly aimed to
bring the attention of employer as it helps in expressing interest of candidate in job. Some

specific information like introduction to the hiring manager, contact session, signature of
candidate, information of the qualification for job, etc. must be present in this so that
interest is enhanced as it describes the ability and information of student and how it fits
best for job (Seifert and Feliks, 2019).
 Tailor CV to meet the job requirements: It is one of the vital part for brining
improvement in the CV. This shows interest of the candidate ion job and also enables
them to represent their skill as well as experience of application so that it can be proved
that the candidate is suitable for job position. The candidate must go through the job
description so that it can figure out what the company wants and is looking so that the
CV can be prepared as per the requirement. Some phases and the keywords from job
description must be enumerated in it so that the student is made fit for the job role (Tadjer
and et. al., 2020).

CONCLUSION
It is concluded from this report that there are different set of skills which must be acquired
by the students such as computer skills, motivation, team work, leadership and time
management. These helps in the employment and university level as it develops skills which are
essential for personal and professional growth. Further, it is concluded that the CV of an
individual must be proper enough which can catch the interest of employer. The improvement in
CV can be made by ways such as proofreading content of CV, including personal statement,
good cover letter and many others.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Beagon, Ú., Niall, D. and Ní Fhloinn, E., 2019. Problem-based learning: student perceptions of
its value in developing professional skills for engineering practice. European Journal of
Engineering Education, 44(6), pp.850-865.
Heron, M. and Palfreyman, D.M., 2019. Developing oracy skills for student voice work.
In Engaging student voices in Higher Education (pp. 89-105). Palgrave Macmillan,
Cham.
Idrus, H., 2017, November. Important soft skills to be integrated in the teaching of technical
courses: Views of lecturers versus students. In 2017 7th World Engineering Education
Forum (WEEF) (pp. 585-588). IEEE.
McDougall, J. and Holden, H., 2017. The silence about oral presentation skills in distance and
online education: new perspectives from an Australian university preparatory
programme. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning. 32(2).
pp.163-176.
Ramon-Casas and et. al., 2019. The different impact of a structured peer-assessment task in
relation to university undergraduates’ initial writing skills. Assessment & Evaluation in
Higher Education. 44(5). pp.653-663.
Seifert, T. and Feliks, O., 2019. Online self-assessment and peer-assessment as a tool to enhance
student-teachers’ assessment skills. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher
Education. 44(2). pp.169-185.
Tadjer and et. al., 2020. Improving soft skills based on students’ traces in problem-based
learning environments. Interactive Learning Environments, pp.1-18.
van Rensburg, H. and Piper, S., 2019. Enabling Students to Learn Hands-On Technical Skills
Using Makerspace in a Higher Education Academic Library. In Conference
Proceedings 2019: Singapore Learning Design and Technology Conference (pp. 1-8).
East Asia Research.
Vanacker, D., Demedts, L. and Van Puyenbroeck, H., 2018, July. Gentlestudent-The City as a
Medium for Acquiring 21st Century Skills. In 4th International Conference on Higher
Education Advances (HEAD'18) (pp. 579-587). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de
València.
Vdovina and et. al., 2019. Video technology for teaching foreign language speaking skills in a
technical university. In 12th International Conference of Education, Research and
Innovation ICERI 2019 Proceedings (pp. 9747-9757).