A guide to transferable skills for Geography students

"A degree alone is not enough. Employers are looking for more than just technical skills and knowledge of a degree discipline. They particularly value skills such as communication, teamworking and problem solving. Job applicants who can demonstrate that they have developed these skills will have a real advantage."

Sir Digby Jones, Director-General, Confederation of British Industry, Foreword to Prospects Directory 2004/5

Increasingly, employers are looking for graduates who can show more than just degree-specific abilities; instead they want to see graduates with well-developed transferable skills. Your Geography degree programme provides you with numerous opportunities to learn and develop a host of these key skills, but sometimes it can be difficult to work out exactly what sorts of skills these are, and which of them employers are looking for. This website provides clear descriptions and illustrations of these skills, to enable you to identify your skills and improve your employability.

Each page of this site illustrates the key skills that you can acquire and expand through the completion of a specific type of activity. These skills are grouped under headings to help you to identify the transferable skills inherent in the successful accomplishment of each of these types of work.