What employers look for
Identify key transferable skills that graduate employers look for.
Employers generally have high expectations of graduates they recruit into their organisation, anticipating that they will arrive with an established level of knowledge, skill and professionalism that should help them to transition into the role more easily than those without a degree. This is why it’s so important that by the time you graduate you not only know what employers in your chosen field(s) are looking for, but that you have dedicated time and effort into developing yourself to meet those requirements.
One of the best ways to understand what employers want from their employees is by researching job profiles. You can use websites like Prospects and TargetJobs to search for specific job profiles, which will highlight the qualifications, skills and experience required for that particular role. Taking some time to review job descriptions and person specifications for live jobs is a really useful way of understanding what type of person the recruiter is looking for. You can find these on any jobs board, such as Indeed, LinkedIn, TotalJobs and of course, your Student Futures Account.
Gaining work experience, whether that be through volunteering, a work placement or a part-time job alongside your studies, is also key to evidence to employers that you have developed the skills they are looking for in the workplace, not just through your degree.
To develop our own deeper understanding of what employers want, the university recently collaborated with local, regional and national employers to develop six graduate attributes that are highly sought after in graduates. As such, we feel confident that if you dedicate the time to developing these attributes alongside your studies, you will enhance your chances of standing out to recruiters and thriving in your early career. Learn more about the Graduate Attributes and how you can develop them on your course and through extra-curricular activities at Cardiff University.
In addition to our graduate attributes, this next section takes a deeper dive into the skills most in-demand from employers.
What are the top skills most employers look for?
Graduate employers look mainly for two types of skills:
- Technical skills – needed to perform a specific task or type of work, for example data analysis, laboratory skills or computer programming.
- Transferable skills – skills that are needed to work in any organisation, they can be developed in one environment or job and applied to almost all others, for example teamwork or communication.
Whilst technical skills will likely be developed through your course and relevant work experience, transferable skills can be developed through a huge range of activities including hobbies, clubs and societies, your course, work experiences, volunteering and your personal life. Transferable skills are always high on graduate recruiters’ wish lists as they tend to be the skills you need to navigate the working world, like how well you manage your own workload or deal with any conflict. The World Economic Forum has outlined the top 10 skills needed for the modern world of work:
Top 10 Employment Skills
(World Economic Forum, 2023)
Type of skill:
Cognitive skills | 
Self-efficacy | 
Technology skills | 
Working with others | 
Management skills
Note: The skills judged to be of greatest importance to workers at the time of the survey.
Cognitive skills top the list for 2023. Image adapted from World Economic Forum, 2023.
TargetJobs and Prospects also have useful advice on the top graduate level skills that are in high demand.