Employers often value soft skills as much as technical abilities, studies or formation, because they determine how well a candidate will integrate into a team and handle challenges at work.
This is where employability skills make a real difference and help create a unique profile that aligns perfectly with the company's needs. These skills also demonstrate your ability to grow and work efficiently.
That's why you should develop and highlight your habits such as working collaboratively and taking initiative, along with the experiences that helped you build them. There is never a bad time to learn, acquire, or maintain skills, especially since they are transferable across industries, countries, and career goals.
Almost every experience helps you develop employability skills, you just need to recognize them, value them and showcase them effectively in your resume, cover letters, and interviews. From an employer's perspective, each skill you've acquired and every experience you've gained represents one less aspect they need to train you in.
Employability skills are a set of transferable skills that make you more effective, adaptable, and valuable in any professional environment. They are built through practical experience and can be applied across various roles, industries, and cultures. What matters most is your ability to reflect on these experiences and draw lessons that you can transfer to new professional situations.
Employability skills include both:
To grow these skills, focus not only on what you do, but also on how you do it, how you respond to feedback, and how you continuously strive to improve. The strongest employability profiles combine a solid mix of soft and hard skills, as well as the ability to learn and adapt in fast-changing environments.
Employability skills include a range of soft skills and, in some cases, relevant hard skills.
Soft skills are every personal aptitude, behavior or attitude you develop through experience and by practicing them regularly. Hard skills are specific technical abilities, such as computer literacy for example.
The ability to communicate effectively and build rapport and trust in multiple languages is a rare and valuable skill. Communication also includes active listening, verbal and nonverbal communication, writing and high-quality feedback. Those qualities are useful in almost every job, field and even personal life. These are competencies that require constant maintaining, practicing, and improving over time.
Strong communication skills also help to avoid misunderstandings, resolve conflicts, and foster a positive and productive work environment. That’s why it is often the first skill employers look for, regardless of the job.
Capacity of adapting to the situation whether the communication style, attitude, confidence or respect is also a quality sought after by recruiters. Stepping out of your comfort zone, challenging yourself and learning from your experience is the best way to improve and test your capacity for adaptability.
Teamwork is an important employability skill, as it forms the basis for efficient work and company success. Being able to collaborate, listen, learn, and adapt in a multicultural and multidisciplinary environment allows you to grow professionally. Good teamwork skills also ensure effective organization and problem-solving within the workplace.
Critical and creative thinking are essential employability skills, as they enable you to analyze situations deeply and generate innovative solutions. The ability to question assumptions, explore different perspectives, and think outside the box helps you tackle complex problems effectively.
Developing these skills is a long process that depends on your personality, but your unique talents make you stand out and add valuable originality to any team. Cultivating critical and creative thinking not only improves decision-making but also fosters adaptability and continuous growth in a rapidly changing work environment.
Initiative and self-motivation are key employability skills that demonstrate your ability to take charge and drive tasks forward without constant supervision. Being proactive, setting personal goals, and maintaining enthusiasm even in challenging situations show employers that you are reliable and committed.
Developing these qualities takes time and varies with personality, but your unique drive and leadership potential make you a valuable asset who can inspire others and contribute original ideas. Strong initiative, self-motivation, and leadership skills enhance your capacity to adapt and grow continuously in a dynamic workplace.
Hard skills are also considered employability skills because, just like soft skills, from an employer’s perspective, they require less investment in training. These skills are particularly valuable when they are directly applicable to the job or when the company does not already have an employee with such expertise. Examples include programming, foreign languages, certifications, or software proficiency.
However, hard skills alone are not sufficient. Having strong hard skills does not necessarily make you a changemaker. The ideal employee possesses both hard and soft skills.
Experiences are the best way to discover, practice, learn, and reinforce your competences. Employability skills are best acquired through real-world experiences that push individuals beyond academic learning and force them to leave their comfort zone behind. These experiences allow people to apply their knowledge, discover new ones, and grow personally and professionally.
Traveling is one of the most enriching ways to develop employability skills. When you travel, especially to foreign countries, you are constantly exposed to unfamiliar situations, languages, and cultures. You must learn to navigate differences, solve practical problems, and interact with people from diverse backgrounds. No matter how you travel, you leave your comfort zone behind. Even organizing your trip requires planning, decision-making, and time management, which are transferable to any job.
Internships, whether close to home or on the other side of the globe, offer a unique opportunity to experience the professional world in a real setting. They allow you to discover different work environments, meet professionals, and understand workplace dynamics. Interns often need to quickly adapt to new tools, software, or procedures, thereby strengthening their hard skills. In addition, being part of a team helps improve interpersonal communication, collaboration, and initiative. Internships also show employers that you’re proactive and eager to learn from hands-on experience.
Volunteering is more than giving time; it’s a powerful learning experience. When you join a volunteering project, you get the opportunity to collaborate with people from various cultural and professional backgrounds, all working toward a common goal. This teaches you how to cooperate, manage challenges in unfamiliar contexts, and contribute positively to a team. Volunteering also demonstrates self-motivation and empathy, qualities highly valued in any job. Additionally, many projects involve planning events, teaching, or manual work, offering chances to develop and continuously apply practical, job-relevant abilities.
Every job, even part-time or student jobs, is an opportunity to grow professionally. Whether you're working in retail, hospitality, administration, or another field, you learn how to interact with colleagues and customers, follow procedures, manage your time, and adapt to a company’s internal culture. These experiences teach responsibility, adaptability, and team-working. It also gives you real-world examples to draw on in future interviews or applications.
Education and training are essential for developing employability skills. Learning new skills through school, university, online courses, or company-led training programs allows you to acquire both theoretical knowledge and practical competencies. This is especially important for hard skills such as using specific software, understanding industry regulations, or obtaining professional certifications.
Continual learning also demonstrates a growth mindset, the willingness to evolve, improve, and adapt to new challenges. Whether you're training independently or through your company, this proactive approach shows employers that you're committed to your professional development and open to change. Education not only builds expertise but also strengthens transversal skills such as organization, critical thinking, and the ability to learn quickly…
RealStep programs give you many different opportunities of developing your employability skills whatever is your academic background, specialties and future objectives.
Through our different internships around the globe such as our business internships programs in Cordoba in Argentina or our nursing programs in Morocco we help you integrate a new exotic working environment. Sharing the daily life of local people is the best way to better understand culture, habits and language.
We offer tailored programs for every academic background, medical, engineering,management, communication… so that everyone can get started.
Find out more about our internships and how they help build real-world skills.
We also propose solutions for traveling gap year projects such as job guarantee for several months in Canada or in New Zealand for example. A way of giving meaning by continuing to learn, developing competences as well as financing the traveling dreams. It’s the occasion to combine different experiences and employability skills.
Making part of the professional environment of a new country is such a great experience teamwork and collaboration with people from other nationalities
Finally, we also offer diploma-based training programs that help you develop officially recognized skills and qualifications. These programs combine practical experience with formal certification, which adds strong value to your CV. For example, you can train to become a surf instructor in Australia or a divemaster in the Seychelles.
Explore our professional training programs!
These experiences not only allow you to live an adventure and meet people from all over the world, but also to gain specialized hard skills that are valued globally. Obtaining such diplomas proves your technical abilities, commitment, and capacity to follow structured training. All of them are highly attractive to future employers in various sectors such as sports, tourism, or outdoor education for example.
The three skills that every job requires are teamwork and collaboration, motivation and communication skills. Those skills allow you to work effectively with others, stay engaged and productive, and express ideas clearly, all of which are essential for achieving goals and contributing to a positive work environment.
Core professional skills are essential abilities that vary depending on the job you want to pursue. For most roles, you need a combination of specific hard skills related to the technical requirements of the position, as well as soft skills that are crucial for working effectively with others and managing human relationships.
Green skills refer to the awareness and ability to develop and live in an eco-responsible society. It’s keeping in mind sustainable objectives by a combination of hard and soft skills.
Hard skills are important knowledge guiding your behaviors, such as environmental standards like the European Climate Pact or the UNIDO guidelines. While soft skills consist of applying those guidelines in every strategic thinking and decision-making.
Good communication skills are among the most highly valued employability skills because they are transferable across almost every situation, industry, and position. Whether you're working in customer service, engineering, management, or healthcare, the ability to express ideas clearly and understand others is essential.
Communication is key to building strong relationships both inside the company with colleagues, managers, and team members, and outside the company, with clients, suppliers, or partners.
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