The aim of this activity is to engage members of ESN ( especially newbies) within the Skills & Employability team, providing them with the basics to understand how different skills can be acquired and incorporated into a curriculum vitae (CV). This mini-workshop serves as the first in a series focusing on increasingly specific themes related to the world of work.
The workshop, lasting about 40 minutes, started with a brainstorming session where participants were encouraged to critically reflect on words associated with the key terms "skills" and "employability". Following this introductory phase, participants were provided with a definition of skills and their categorization into "hard skills" and "soft skills". An interactive session ensued, during which participants were asked to move post-it notes (prepared beforehand with the names of certain skills) into the categories of hard or soft skills. This was followed by a brief debate, for instance on the skill of writing. Subsequently, the primary challenge of recognizing and incorporating skills into a CV was highlighted, emphasizing that soft skills, linked to informal and non-formal environments, constitute an essential yet often overlooked part of the CV. Contextual examples were provided within the CV to make soft skills more easily identifiable. Finally, through the sharing of personal experiences within the trainers' ESN context, the subjective nature of soft skills was explored. At the end, participants were asked to provide verbal feedback on how they would implement the workshop.
