Marketable skills are those that prospective employers will look upon favorably when determining if they'd like to hire your student for an internship or job. Two career experts, Marcia B. Harris and Sharon L. Jones, share their tips regarding obtaining marketable skills in the book, The Parent's Crash Course in Career Planning: Helping Your College Student Succeed (VGM Career Books, 1996).

They suggest that students develop strengths in at least two or three of the following areas since many employers look at marketable skills even more than they look at what a student's major is:

• Computer skills (e.g., programming, word processing, spreadsheets, data base management, e-mail, Internet)
• Quantitative skills (e.g., accounting, statistics, economics)
• Communication skills (e.g., written and oral)
• Marketing/selling skills (e.g., sales, publicity, fundraising)
• Scientific skills (e.g., lab skills, scientific research)
• Foreign language skills (e.g., especially Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese or Russian)
• Leadership skills (e.g., supervisory, extracurricular leadership roles, teamwork/team leader)

To learn more about their career tips for parents, go to http://www.jobweb.com/resources/library/Parents/10_Tips_for_Parents_19_01.htm.

Back to Newsletter Home