Final year

Have you graduated recently? Or are you starting to think about life after you leave university? Before your time at university becomes a distant memory, it’s important to reflect on the skills you have gained from your degree and highlight them in your CV.

You may be wondering what skills you have gained. A degree develops a wide range of transferable skills that will be valuable to any employer and it’s important to emphasise these. To help you reflect on the types of skills you have attributed whilst studying, here are a few examples:

• the ability to research, source and examine information from a variety of sources
• thinking laterally and finding solutions to problems
• critically analyse evidence, construct coherent arguments and debate
• excellent written and verbal skills
• team working skills
• understanding of political, sector or industry issues on a local, national and international level.

Remember, when stressing these skills it is important to use examples to back up your statements. For example,

“I have strong debating skills; this was demonstrated when taking part in our School debate team, discussing topics such as the European Union, globalization and capitalism. As part of the debate team, I took part in a competition which tested my ability to construct and argue political topics in a formal setting.”

Tip! When explaining how you possess a certain skill it is useful to use the acronym CAR – context (what happened), action (what you did) and result (the outcome and what you achieved).