What and Why of Know How Skills

Issue 46, September 1, 2005

Did you know? A student’s GPA is not the most important hiring criteria for most employers. In fact, employers ranked GPA as seventeenth on a list of twenty skills or qualities for job candidates. Employers want to hire people who do well in college and have marketable or employability skills. Bill Coplin, author of 10 Things Employers Want You to Learn in College, calls them know-how skills (KHS). At Northwestern University these skills are referred to as your total package, at Alverno College, it is ability-based education, and author Patrick Combs, tags them as unassigned homework. Regardless of how you label them, students need to build these critical skills and the evidence to document them to be successful. This 2005-06 year, each of the 16, On the QT’s will feature a “know-how skill” with a number of resources, ideas, and activities developed around it. It is our hope that CCC students will not only get a great education but the skills they need to live and work in the 21st century workplace. After all, their future, our future and California’s future depends on them!

Try This:

  • Ask students some questions about what skills and education they think they need to be successful in today’s workplace.
  • Explain that the workplace is rapidly changing and employers are looking for people with a good education and marketable skills.Then, have students participate in this short exercise.Have students stand up and then read the following list of KHS or experiences.
  1. If you can type 35 errorless words per minutes, remain standing.
  2. If you can create professional looking, Word documents, remain standing.
  3. If you can make effective presentations to a group, large or small, remain standing.
  4. If you are able to build graphs, charts, and spreadsheets using Excel or Access, remain standing.
  5. If you can determine the percentage change between your GPA in the fall and spring semesters, remain standing.
  6. If you have had at least 3 experiences teaching others, remain standing.
  7. If you have a good credit rating, reasonable debt, and usually balance your checkbook, remain standing.
  8. If your assignments are done and ready for proofing 24 hours before they are due, remain standing.
  9. If you have held an office in a community or professional organization, remain standing.
  10. If you have completed an internship, remain standing
  • If you have students who had all 10 skills, ask them some questions especially about their internship experiences.
  • Discuss how each of these skills would be important at work.
  • Ask students how they will use this information to help them better prepare for their careers.
  • Suggest that students evaluate their know-how skills, by completing the new on-line lesson, Know-How Skills: Your Ticket to a Good Job!

FIO: For Instructors Only
Can you, as the instructor, identify some of the skills students will be learning in your class that match the KHS?
How could these skills help you identify relevant student learning outcomes for your course?
Would you consider awarding extra credit to students who plan, develop, and reassess their KHS during the semester?

Quik Quote:
The world of work has changed more in your lifetime than in the 150 years preceding your birth.
Marlowe C. Embree, Career Management in the New World of Work