Laura Cook 0:05

Hello and welcome to this bonus podcast, the brief notes guide to employability skills workshops. In this episode, we hear from Ashley Fulford, the workshop tutor, about what's involved and how you can access this really useful course. My colleague Steve Taylor recently caught up with Ashley and started by asking him what we mean by employability skills and why they're important.

Ashley Fulford 0:29

So employability skills are those skills that perhaps you don't even think about as a young person and as a cadet. And they're the soft skills or the transferable skills that uh you spend an awful lot of time developing in the cadet forces or uh youth organizations. They're things that differentiate you from lots of other young people and make you more attractive to employers in the business space and in the marketplace. You look to find your job of the future.

Steve Taylor 1:00

What sorts of things are we talking about? What sort of skill sets uh are transferable from the cadet experience to the workplace?

Ashley Fulford 1:07

So some of the typical skills that we're looking at are communication skills, the ability to work as a team and collaborate with people around you, time management um skills, being able to present things effectively, um, think about problems and how you might solve them. And in addition to that, uh how you would use the appropriate resources or equipment or and even you know other um skills of other people to try to facilitate uh a proper solution to a problem and also to um just work better in the environment that you would you end up uh being employed in.

Steve Taylor 1:48

Lots of examples that I'm sure um cadets and uh members of youth organizations can think of. Well, if you're thinking just about the cadet piece, I guess uh Ashley, the sort of things you're talking about is if they try and think about a command task and all of the skills that they have to use in that. Would that be a good example?

Ashley Fulford 2:05

Certainly, a command task would be a good example, whether it'd be a leader-led command task or leaderless command task. You know, if you were the leader, um, that speaks for itself, where you're using some of those communication skills and thinking things through and coming up with a solution to a problem, and the team is are looking at you to kind of move things forward, but perhaps also a leaderless command task where it is all about collaboration, uh, it's all about cooperation, it's all about um consultation with some of your colleagues so that you you do actually uh work in harmony and and work well in an environment or any any company or workplace today. And being able to do all of those without being a leader in it with a big L are equally as important as that leadership role itself.

Steve Taylor 2:57

I I imagine a lot of employers when they get to the recruitment stage uh will take it as a given that the candidates have got the minimum requirements, the academic requirements to apply for a post. If they're able to demonstrate these transferable skills, does that make them a better candidate? Are they more employable?

Ashley Fulford 3:17

If we look at all the things we've talked about, as you've described Steve, as transferable skills uh that can be transferred from the cadet environment to the workplace to the family environment or ever anywhere for that matter, you know, the transferable skills that you've learnt as a member of the cadet forces or another uniformed youth organization will absolutely put you uh ahead of some other candidates that have been not exposed to some of those um opportunities and situations that you would have found yourself in. And perhaps examples of that outside of you know the command task situation would be um being able to stand up and present to a group of people, being able to pass on information and instructions to a group of people. Uh, we would see that as in the cadet forces or youth organizations of being able to teach lessons or give demonstrations. All those examples are absolutely some attributes that many young people may not have got because they've not had the same opportunities in the cadet forces.

Steve Taylor 4:28

And that could be the difference when they go for an interview, just simply being able to stand up and give a presentation to whoever's doing the recruiting. That could be the real start. That's the difference from the start.

Ashley Fulford 4:41

It absolutely could be, just as being able to walk into an interview situation with a degree of confidence and look people in the eye, and being able to talk clearly and answer questions uh properly, uh and listen to what those questions are, listening skills, so that you do give the the interviewers uh the best possible amount of information about you as a person, being very smart and presentable. And that, you know, we do that to a very large extent in uniformed youth organizations. So all those things will put you absolutely at an advantage with many of your peer groups.

Steve Taylor 5:21

And I guess the the ability to have a plan before you go into that interview to make an impression and all of the things that that you've spoken about is uh tremendously important in making that first impression. But there's also a need, I suspect, to translate the sort of the military speak and some of the jargon of the cadet experience and translate that into, should we best call it civilian speak or the language that a recruiter will understand.

Ashley Fulford 5:50

Yeah, in our Unit 3 pairing for employability or our tutorial, we cover some of those things because we get very used in the Air Forces to talking about things in particular ways. So being able to translate a less using the word lesson to let's call it a presentation. Let's think about some of the instructions that we're giving. And perhaps in the work environment, they might be some standard work instructions that we might talk about. So that translation between the two, we certainly give you some hints and tips on in the employability workshop.

Steve Taylor 6:27

I know from uh talking to uh a number of young people, when they enter the workplace, uh there is some something of a culture shock to some degree, because in all businesses, in all organizations, there is a hierarchy uh from the top management down to whatever we might call it, the shop floor for the sake of the argument. Is it the case that cadets perhaps have a better understanding of how that hierarchy works? Because they're used to a rank structure, for example. So they know how to deal with those above and below them on whatever level they're working at.

Ashley Fulford 7:01

In the cadet forces or youth organizations, we are used to hierarchical structure. There is one of those in most organizations or workplaces. I think the way so as a as a young person that's been you know aware of that, the cadet NCO ranks or what officers do or what adult instructors do, I think that sets you up in a good way to realize that in the workplace there is a similar structure. But I think I would emphasize that in the workplace, you know, it is a structure that is slightly softer than we would see in the military environment. But how does that translate well to the cadet forces? We're all volunteers in the cadet force, whether we be a young person or an adult. Um, so therefore, that kind of slightly harder approach, perhaps, slightly firmer approach to an organizational structure, is less so in the cadet forces because we're all volunteers and we all want to remain part of that organization. So that therefore translates very well to the civilian employment world, where you know those structures are there, but they are definitely uh exercised in a more careful and say slightly less hard way.

Steve Taylor 8:18

Now you run the employability skills workshops. Uh, tell me a little bit about that. How do they work?

Ashley Fulford 8:23

So the employability skills workshops that are allied to Unit Three, which is part of you know the suite of units that you can select from or young people can select from uh to complete their, you know, their BTEC level two. We run them on a monthly basis, mostly online, but they can be run face to face as well uh over a period of uh you know two or three hours, where we will look at things such as what transferable skills are. So we make it you know very clear to those that attend what they've done in the you know their youth organization as a direct transferable effect into the employment world. We will also cover things around writing a CV and what are the critical things that you might want to include in your CV with a connection to a role or job specification, which looks at what the job that you might be applying for actually requires you to do, but also the what we call the person or people specification, which are more based around the qualities of the person and very much focuses on some of these transferable or soft skills. So we'll cover those two specifications. Uh, and we'll also talk at length about interview skills and some of the do's and don'ts, also things to think about and possible questions that you might get before you go to interview, so that you can get them all prepared in your head and then give the best account of yourself in that environment.

Steve Taylor 9:59

Being prepared. That's a major bit of going for interview, isn't it, Ashley? And I guess one of the things that um the uh the cadets are the learners who who come on the workshops, one of their questions must be how to answer the difficult question. Uh, and there are difficult questions and sometimes trick questions in interviews, aren't there? Do we cover that as well?

Ashley Fulford 10:18

Yep, we cover what I would call more routine questions, and as you say, those difficult questions that the interview panel might ask you, you know, such as, and these are things that can be thought about and prepared before, but such as, you know, where do you see yourself in three, five years' time? And I know for a young person that seems a you know a long way away, but time flies very quickly, and before you know it, you're kind of on that journey to three to five years. Um catches up with you rather quickly, doesn't it? It does, it does. And then also, um, you know, we we also cover some of the questions that you, as the person being interviewed, might wish to ask that those that interview you, the you know, the interview panel or the interviewer, um, such as, you know, what do you expect from this role? What questions have I not answered, possibly as well as I could have done for you? And how would you like me to elaborate further? We think about questions from the interviewers and also some questions we might you might want to consider when we're at the end of the interview when you get the opportunity to ask them some questions from yourself. How long does the workshop last? The workshop typically lasts, we'll say about two hours maximum. Uh, if it's uh delivered online, and say that's normally I normally do those once a month um at this point in time, about two hours. Uh, there's a there's some bit of pre-work and pre-reading that you get get sent before two hours. And then if we do a face-to-face one, they tend to be slightly longer, uh, which would possibly be three hours. Um, but it's that type of time.

Steve Taylor 11:53

As a C V college learner, if you're doing the BTAC, you don't have to have opted for uh unit three, which is employability skills. Anybody who is a C V college learner can access this course, can't they?

Ashley Fulford 12:05

They can. So absolutely, you know, learners can select this unit three as part of their qualification. But if they want to do this as a, as we say, a tutorial where they get a little bit of extra added value from attending this, you know, as on the back of their qualification, then anyone can attend. As long as they're signed up for the qualification, should they want to use this unit or not, they can attend.

Steve Taylor 12:29

So, how can people get more information about accessing the workshop?

Ashley Fulford 12:32

So, if you're interested in doing the workshop towards your um qualification as unit three or as a general tutorial, then you can go on to the website cvcollege.org and register through that website. And then someone will contact you, or you can select one of the dates, and then I will contact you to invite you to one of the sessions that's running. And typically at the moment, they tend to be on a Tuesday night, as I say, the first Tuesday of every month.

Laura Cook 13:03

Remember, the Employability Skills workshops are open to any CV College learner. You can find all the information on how to access the online sessions at the website at cvcollege.org. My thanks to Ashley Fulford for that valuable insight, and I hope you found this edition of Brief Notes useful.