4 Ways to Ensure Professors Help Close the Skills Gap

As a career counselor, you know that your students can benefit from the skills gap in the workforce.?

Employers are desperately aware that roles and responsibilities for most positions are shifting. According to a recent report from Gartner, 58% of the workforce will need new skill sets to do their jobs successfully.?

So when job candidates walk through the door with those newer skills already in the bag, they are a definite asset to the team. Hiring managers will recognize that they require less time, training, and investment to pull their abilities up to speed.?

But you have to instill those skills early to ensure students have enough practice and expertise to impress in the job search. And you can’t do it on your own.?

By working closely with the professors, you can teach them about these industry trends. Then, once they’re familiar with what students need to learn for their long-term success in any career, they can design the curriculum and classroom activities to reinforce that skills training.?

Here are four ways you want professors to address the skills gap in the classroom:

1. Instill dependability

This year’s Future of Work survey from Monster.com addressed which soft skills have the highest demand across all industries. According to their findings, there are four skills that employees need most from candidates to fill the skills gap. And out of all of them, dependability took the top slot.?

The report offered arriving at work on time, not taking excessive time off, and following through on all assignments as examples of dependability. For the most part, college classes already reinforce dependability. Students must get to class on time, have reliable attendance, notify their professor if they are too sick to attend class, and turn in assignments on time.?

When discussing dependability with professors, be sure they understand why it’s so valuable. Some are generous with their students, allowing extensions and late arrivals without any consequences. And while that is necessary for students experiencing a crisis, others need experience with that stricter hand for long-term benefits.?

Undergrads are likely to complain when professors come across as excessively strict for no reason. So encourage the faculty to explain to students how learning dependability now strengthens their skill set for the future. Connecting the dots and pulling up evidence from research demonstrates a purpose for the rigid rules.

2. Give teamwork an assist

Most students detest group work — and for a good reason! Traditionally, someone wants to control everything, others want to slack off, and one person ends up doing more than their fair share of the work.?

The bonus of practicing collaboration in the classroom before encountering it in the workplace is that professors can provide training wheels without coming across as micromanaging. After all, you can’t shove people together and expect they’ll know how to collaborate automatically. Some have never had experience and need guidance before facing a remote work team someday.

For longer projects, suggest that professors check in with groups periodically. For example, they can meet up for a conference or simply ask for a short report of their progress. This approach should keep teams accountable for maintaining a steady pace rather than procrastinate.?

You can also recommend that professors divide up the workload and put their expectations in writing. A group contract informs the professor about who is responsible for what in the final product. But more importantly, it teaches students to strategize and plan before getting started. Then, in the workplace, they’ll already have the habit of clearly communicating when working with a team.?

3. Encourage problem-solving skills?

You always want students to take advantage of campus resources. The Career Center, professors’ office hours, tutoring services, and more all exist for their benefit. But when students become too reliant, you want to ensure they aren’t losing sight of their own problem-solving skills.?

When students come to you, and they genuinely don’t know something, it’s your place to teach. But when they consistently come in with the same questions, you can’t keep holding their hand. Ultimately, that holds back their professional development.?

For example, if someone comes into the Career Center looking for help writing a cover letter, great! But if they come in three more times with the same request, suggest that they look at what you’ve worked on with them before. Once they review their notes and get started on their own, then it can be appropriate for you to look over their work.?

Email out information and research about the need for problem-solving skills in the workplace to persuade the rest of the faculty and staff to adopt a similar approach for their services.?

Another way to push students into problem-solving is for professors to give them open-ended assignments. For example, they could ask for a creative way of presenting research. Instead of an essay, it could be a website, podcast, YouTube video, or creative writing piece. The options are limitless. Without clear-cut guidelines on what the professor expects, students can explore and determine what is best all on their own.?

4. Put students in new situations

In addition to dependability, teamwork, and problem-solving, the Monster.com findings indicate that employers need candidates with flexibility. The report defines it as the willingness to take on new work or new ways of working. And, given the changes in the workplace the past year, it’s no surprise that companies need employees with this trait to fill the skills gap.?

If students have hopes of attaining flexible work hours in the future, they must prove that they can be flexible when needs change.

Professors can keep students on their toes by switching things up in the classroom. Oddly enough, something as simple as rearranging the desks can create a challenge for some. Of course, it can be uncomfortable to encounter that shift in routine without warning. But the more they’re exposed to it, the more flexible students can become.?

Professors can also switch things up with different grading methods, new kinds of assignments, and nontraditional activities in the classroom. So long as everything serves to reinforce the curriculum and the professor’s values, these unique experiences help students remember the content better and learn to be more flexible.?

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Students can also highlight THESE skills from their pandemic experience in the job search! https://careershift.com/blog/2021/06/skills-for-recent-graduate-jobs/?