When Being ‘Book-Smart’ Is Not Enough

Skills Graduates Need to Succeed in the Future Workplace

The term ‘employability’ keeps making the headlines in higher education. This article aims to explore what are the skills current university students need in order to succeed in the future workplace, and why employability is a topic which must be addressed by higher education institutions and their internationalisation strategies. We illustrate the role 21st century skills play and what employers deem important when recruiting candidates. We aim to look into the skills that will ensure students are hired in the near future and come up with three professional types with the ‘most wanted’ skills. We provide five guiding principles that may help higher education institutions to rethink their employability strategies and what they can do to ensure they ‘deliver’ graduates who feel ready to tackle a job market that may be different from the world as we know it.