Employability skills: a system of recognition at Universitat Jaume I

Abstract

Following CEDEFOP [1] the employability is “the combination of factors which enable individuals to progress towards or get into employment, to stay in employment and to progress during their career.” Also, theories of employability have become increasingly complex and multi-dimensional in the last decades. [2]. Employability depends on the knowledge, skills and attitudes, how the graduate use those assets, and how the graduates present them to employers. Moreover, there is an amount of work developed by Careers Services and faculties enhancing employabiity of our students through diferent initiatives and programmes (placements, workshops, career guidance, traning for job search, and so forth). Also University Jaume I has developed an educational model, in which their 10 principles we find “promotion of employability and the smart entrepreneurial spirit”. However, from the vicerectorate for Students, Employment and Educational Innovation we want to go a step forward to enhance employability of our graduates launching a formal document that will be an edge in their curriculum. The main aim of this system is to show a potential employer evidences of high impact employability soft and hard competences, achieved by graduates and undergraduates during their studies. This competences have been developed by the students through active participation in both extracurricular and curricular training, increasing of sensitivity and experience (skills acquired by practice) activities organised both by the University or other organisations, and recognised by an expert committee. The aim of this communication is to explain the features of the system: background, requeriments for each activity, administrative procedure, and results. Also we will comment on progress and future challenges of the system.