It is important to think about the process you go through when acquiring new knowledge and qualifications, both during your study and outside the university. Companies are very much interested in hearing how you work with specific tasks and how you solve the different challenges you come across in your life. Your future employer is hiring you - not your university diploma.
Therefore, it is important to be able to describe how you approach and work with different tasks.
Test your knowledge and qualifications in practice
The best way to familiarize yourself with how to use the acquired knowledge and qualifications from your education is to test them out in a practical setting. Something that can already be done during your studies. You can do voluntary work, project work, or find yourself a student job. By exploring your career opportunities outside of the university, you automatically create and strengthen your professional network.
You can divide your qualifications into three types:
Your competences
You acquire the general academic competencies when you work with different academic challenges and tools. In your study, it is often not the product you are judged on, but rather whether you are able to critically relate to and reflect on the process you have been through. Including how you have specifically approached challenges towards the product.
What are your general academic competencies?
With your education, you achieve the following general academic competencies:
- be able to delimit, define and analyze an academic problem using relevant academic theories and methods
- be able to systematize complex knowledge and data as well as select and prioritize matters that are significant to the topic
- be able to critically evaluate the various theories and methods of the subject
- have a precise and consistent application of concepts and be able to engage in dialogue and argue on a basic theoretical basis
- take a critical stand on sources and document them
- convey professional issues and solution models so that it becomes relevant and understandable for different target groups
- be able to handle complex and development-oriented situations and enter into a collaboration, including being able to receive and give constructive criticism
- be able to work independently, disciplined, structured and purposeful, including also being able to meet deadlines and formalities
You can read more about your general academic competencies in your curriculum.
The subject specific competences are the competences that are unique to your programme. They are the ones that separate your professionalism from other programmes’ professionalism. If you would like a career in research or teaching in your field, then it is among other the subject specific competences you’ll be drawing on.
In your curriculum it is described that you, among others, will acquire the following subject specific competences and will be able to:
- investigate, analyse and solve academic problems thoroughly by means of relevant academic theories and methods as well as incorporating current international research
- systematise complex knowledge and data as well as select and prioritize particularities that are essential for the topic
- critically assess, the field’s various theories and methods to use language – written and/or spoken – which is topic-oriented, precise, and correct
- disseminate research-based knowledge and discuss complex scientific issues, making it relevant and comprehensible for different target groups
- control work- and developmental situations that are complex and presuppose new solutions, as well as be able to collaborate, including the ability to receive and give constructive criticism
- work independently, in a disciplined, structured, and goal-oriented including the ability to meet deadlines and other formalities
Your personal competences thus describe your qualities as a person, which has a great influence on how you carry out your work and how you collaborate with others.
It is a good idea to practice putting your personal skills into words. Once you are clarified, you are more attractive to a potential employer. You can better present yourself and assess whether a type of job or workplace is right for you.
Employers are often also at least as interested in hearing about who you are and what motivates you as what you have read.
What are your personal competences?
You can consider how you typically approach a task and approach collaboration as it will tell something about your personal competences. Try to do the following exercise concretely:
Exercise
Think back to the last time you participated in a project work:
- How did you approach the process from the start?
- What went well?
- What went less well?
- What personal competencies in you were the reason for the things that went well?
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