If you want to succeed in today’s competitive job landscape, you’ll need specific skills, assets, and knowledge to get ahead. We call these abilities ‘job qualifications’.
Employers value applicants with credible qualifications because they refer to a person’s relevant experience, personal attributes, and skills necessary to succeed in a job.
In this article, you’ll find out more about job qualifications, including specific examples of the skills employers want.
What are job qualifications?
Job qualifications include skills, experience, and formal certifications you may need to land and maintain a career. Some examples include:
- Hard skills such as computer programming, engineering, or accounting,
- Soft skills like communication and teamwork,
- Degrees from university or college,
- Certificates from vocational schools, TAFE, or community colleges.
Without at least a few relevant job qualifications, graduates are unlikely to succeed when applying for jobs. You’ll usually find a list of the required qualifications and job responsibilities in the listed job description.
Types of job qualifications
There’s no such thing as an ‘unskilled’ job. While a particular position may not require technical knowledge or training, you’ll still benefit from industry experience and universal job skills like time management, problem-solving, organisation, and critical thinking.
You probably already have many of these skills already in your repertoire—the important thing is to know how to show them off! Add some of these skills to your resume’s qualifications summary to increase your chances of job success.
Tangible qualifications
Tangible qualifications are those we can see or touch, such as university degrees or TAFE certifications. You can physically produce a legal document to prove you have completed training in a given subject or discipline.
These qualifications are a great way to show your dedication and job-relevant skills to employers. However, in our competitive landscape, degrees and certifications usually aren’t enough to land a job. With more than 40% of Australians aged 20 to 34 holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, graduates must do more to stand out.
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Intangible qualifications
You can’t see or touch intangible qualifications, but they still exist—just not on paper! These qualifications can include unrecorded work experience, life experience, and soft skills like leadership or flexibility.
Unless you’ve completed a specific course, you’re unlikely to have a tangible record of your problem-solving capabilities or your fantastic teamwork skills. Instead, you’ll need to know how to communicate these assets to a hiring manager through examples and persuasive language.
Hard skills
Hard skills are physical abilities or technical skills that we can easily quantify. For example, it’s easy to measure a person’s typing speed through an online test with quantitive results, making it a hard skill.
Here are a few other hard skills that can help you get ahead in the challenging job market.
Computer literacy
Computer literacy describes a person’s ability to use and understand technology, including computers, smartphones, and computerised machinery.
Today, this skill is crucial for success in almost all fields of work. For example, accountants must know how to use specialised software like MYOB and Xero, while electricians must be able to use electronic devices such as testing probes and peripherals.
Strong computer literacy skills will help you quickly adapt to any software or hardware you need to use in your career and smoothly transition through future technological advances.
Language
While communication is a soft skill, language proficiency is a hard skill, especially in terms of foreign languages. According to the Diplomatic Academy, language speaking proficiency ratings in Australia range from S0+ (ability to satisfy basic needs through rehearsed phrases) to S4+ (near equivalency to a well-educated and articulate native speaker).
If your chosen career path involves interacting with coworkers and clients from different backgrounds, building your foreign language proficiency skills is a fantastic way to get a leg up over other job seekers.
Soft skills
Soft skills, also known as core skills, common skills, or power skills, are not usually measurable. They are capabilities and assets that will help you succeed in any profession—and even in daily life.
While some soft skills are innate and part of your personality, you can still build upon them, usually through real-world experience or training programs.
Let’s dive deeper into some soft employability skills hiring managers include in job postings now.
Communication and interpersonal skills
Communication skills allow you to effectively share ideas, information, and feelings with other people. More specifically, communication is a set of skills including:
- Body language
- Listening skills
- Confidence
- Open-mindedness
- Respect and understanding
Good communication skills can help you draft a compelling resume, pass interviews with ease, and advance in your career. Requesting information, working as a team, and discussing problems all require solid communication capabilities.
Adaptability
If you’re an adaptable person, you can rise up to new situations and conditions with confidence. It is an especially crucial skill in the modern working world, where technologies, systems, and processes are always changing.
Adaptability allows you to adjust plans and objectives to suit new priorities or meet changing obligations. For example, you may need to shuffle your to-do list to meet a client’s updated deadline or quickly learn a new software program on-the-job.
Job descriptions often call for qualified candidates with strong adaptability skills because they can channel change into success, reducing downtime and encouraging innovation.
Resilience
Resilience describes a person’s ability to cope with crises and ‘bounce back’ from difficult situations. Challenges are inevitable in the workplace—from disagreements with colleagues to heavy workloads—so employers deeply value employees who can manage problems with professionalism and a positive attitude.
Time management
Time management skills are a common job posting addition. These skills allow you to handle all the tasks life throws at you without becoming stressed or overwhelmed. In the workplace, managing time might involve prioritising tasks by level of urgency, delegating or deleting those that are unimportant.
You can demonstrate your time management skills in an interview by arriving on time and coming prepared with notes and questions to ask the interviewer.
Australian requirements
In Australia, some roles have specific legal requirements, especially if you’ll be working with vulnerable parties such as children or people with disabilities. Two common requirements are the Working with Children Check and the National Police Check.
Working with Children Check
According to the Government of South Australia’s Screening Unit, Working with Children Checks determine whether a person poses an “unacceptable risk to children”. The Screening Unit will check an individual’s child protection information, criminal history, and other data to make their assessment.
Working with Children Checks last for five years. You may require an assessment if you work in a prescribed position, which means you work with or are likely to work with children.
Examples of jobs and professions that may require Working with Children Checks include childcare, education, social work, babysitting, healthcare, children’s party services, and counselling.
National Police Check
A National Police Check or National Police Certificate provides a summary of a person’s offender history in Australia. Only organisations accredited by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission may perform these checks.
Some industries that may require National Police Checks include childcare, government, aged care, education, correction, law, liquor sales, vehicle sales, healthcare, financial services, and mining.
Education
Education is one of the most common ways to acquire tangible job qualifications. In Australia, most people achieve tertiary accreditations through TAFE (Technical and Further Education) or university.
Certifications
TAFE colleges provide certifications for students who successfully complete certain levels of education. You can achieve these certifications through award courses, which provide graduates with qualifications recognised by the Australian Qualifications Framework.
These qualifications include the following:
- Certificate I
- Certificate II
- Certificate III
- Certificate IV
- Diploma
- Advanced Diploma
Each award is essentially a step up from the previous option. For example, a person with a Certificate IV qualification is likely to have more specialised and in-depth knowledge and skill than a person with a Certificate II qualification.
University degree
University degrees are a step up from an advanced diploma, offering the highest levels of education available in Australia. The available degree levels are:
- Associates Degree
- Bachelor’s Degree
- Master’s Degree
- Doctoral Degree
Like certificates, each degree level requires more time and more in-depth study than the previous. Some industries have specific degree prerequisites, such as Medicine, which requires a Doctoral Degree (Ph. D).
Work experience
In many cases, work experience is even more important to employers than degrees and certifications. Real-world experience shows hiring managers that you understand the ins and outs of your industry.
The best way to gain relevant experience before graduation is through programs such as internships, working or studying abroad, volunteer work, and job placements.
Examples of job qualifications
Now, let’s go through some specific examples of qualifications you may need for certain career paths.
- If you want to work as a Physician, you’ll need to complete a Ph. D in Medicine, complete a one to two-year residency in a hospital or community practice, and register with the Medical Board of Australia.
- Budding electricians will typically need at least a Certificate III in Electrotechnology Electrician (via an apprenticeship) and an Electrician’s License. Many employers will also require on-the-job experience.
- Administration managers will often need experience in administration work, strong computer literacy, a fast typing speed, and soft skills like communication, time management, and organisation.
How Practera can help
Practera is a Project Learning Technology enabled organisation that can connect you with real-world learning opportunities, internships, work placements, and industry experience programs.
Enrolling in one of these programs will allow you to gain in-demand skills employers are recruiting for and provide you with real talking points for your CV/next job applications, participating & learning as a student consultant to solve various real-world business challenges from driving technological innovation, creating new funding opportunities, finding new market expansion pathways to encouraging sustainability. You’ll also have exposure to various real-life business scenarios an experience valuable to most employers across industries and sectors you will also have access to industry-experienced mentors and a dedicated Practera programs manager to help you successfully navigate the program and provide you with guidance to ace your next interviews and accelerate your career.
If you’re a student, check out our government-backed student programs to sign up for free and kick-start your career.
If you’re an educator looking to boost your student’s chances of success or increase student engagement, you can try our industry experience program for free, contact the Practera team or download our white paper to learn more about project-based learning programs.
Gain Experience & Skills Employers Are Recruiting For Today!
Enrol for free in Practera’s government-backed live programs to build your employability skills