Workshop on Professional Development: How Convenors & Students can Enhance Skills for Employability

Clearly to thrive in today’s age of global competition, it becomes significantly necessary for the graduates to be “corporate-ready” to attract both better career opportunities and maximum learning. Job seekers and employers are constantly in need of a different mix of skills rather than just a wealth of theoretical knowledge. With this requirement, graduates with skills imbalance and talent mismatch will definitely fall behind in today’s era of cut-throat competition.

Professional development skills are the game changers and possibly the most effective way to prepare students for getting their dream job. The key is to have sustained efforts by strengthening the weakness of the students and equip them with the right skills that present age organizations are crying out for. Professional development skills are the requisite and ensure a strong foundation in a student’s career and help in surely reaching greater heights of success. Also, such skills play a vital role in creating an agile and entrepreneurial workforce for the corporate world.

In order to make the students more competent, Department of Economics & International Business of School of Business Studies (SBS), with support from Bond University, Australia organized a workshop on “Professional Development: How Convenors and Students can Enhance Skills for Employability” for the students at the Greater Noida campus of Sharda University. This workshop was conducted with a major focus to up-skill convenors, teachers, and students of School of Business Studies and further, to improve their employability scope.

The Director of Learning and Teaching (Higher Education) – Bond University in Queensland, Dr. Shelley Kinash was the keynote speaker for this one-day workshop. She is an eminent industry influencer and an active researcher who is well-acknowledged for her research findings to improve education at all levels. Recently, Dr Kinash has successfully completed two major Australian government-funded national projects based on exploring different ways to enhance the employability of undergraduate and postgraduate university students.

Here’re the major highlights from the workshop:

• Identification of the soft skills that employers are seeking
• Strategies that work to improve graduate employability
• Applied original research results from India revealing the differences between student, graduate, educator, and employer perspectives
• Teaching skills, including rubrics, to embed employability into curriculum and assessment

Students of SBS really enjoyed the workshop. They participated actively during the workshop and Dr. Shelley Kinash happily answered the queries of the students.

In a nutshell

While professional development skills are needed for a better employability prospect, it is much more crucial when you are a student who is going to become a part of an entrepreneurial venture or a fiercely competitive corporate world. Such workshops at a university level surely contribute to the overall professional development of the individual and help thousands of aspiring youngsters to land their dream jobs.