Thursday’s advice: Understand yourself, your skills and your ideals. 

Many employers look for specific skills when recruiting, and a student exhibiting many of these qualities will have an advantage over those who don’t. But as you develop skills, you need to understand how they’re beneficial. Understanding yourself, your skills and your ideals is about more than just knowing yourself; it’s about understanding what you have to offer employers, how your skills may be relevant to your chosen career and knowing what’s important to you in life. Considering aspects such as having a work-life balance, quick progression, learning on the job, your location and salary are all part of understanding your ideals, whilst understanding your strengths, how you’ve developed them and exploring how they relate to your chosen career is essential to understanding yourself. We’ve got plenty of tools to support you in gaining skills, knowledge and experience, and to help you make sense of all of this, as well as letting you start thinking about the things that are important to you after graduation.

Helpful resources:

– Check out the ‘your skills‘ webpage to learn how to make the most of you – there’s load on offer for skills development!
– TARGETjobs offers a really useful guide to the skills and competencies that employers look for
– The Employability Tutorial is a great tool for understanding your skills and deciding what’s important to you.

Someone like you
Scott – 3rd year History

What do you want to do after graduation?
I plan to become involved in student unions and human resource management in some way or another!

What have you done during your time at York to help you achieve this?
– I’ve been course rep for the last three years, helping me acquire connections with the history department and effectively communicate the issues of my year groups.
– Been Vice-Chair Welfare for Goodricke College, which involved managing a team of people across the year. This culminated in freshers week, where I had to organise all of the events, interview and select STYC’s, ensure the welfare of freshers on every night out and book clubs and alternative events, whilst running daily meetings to inform the STYCs and JCRC of ongoing issues.
– I have also also worked with the Student Internship Bureau, working over the summer in the Institute for Effective Education, which has increased my knowledge of working in a team and communicating data and information to a wide audience.

We’ve also put together a handy ‘hints and tips for final year students‘ flyer to help you think about what to consider in your final year at university.

Would you like to chat to someone but don’t think you need an appointment?

You can speak to our Brand Ambassadors on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday week 9 in the library foyer for information, advice and freebies!

Want to be in with a chance of winning a Christmas hamper?! Follow this link to our quick quiz to enter the draw, with the winner to be announced in week 10!

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