‘Skills Finder’ Game – Fast Play Flashcards

As you journey through secondary school and college, you’re not just collecting grades and facts, but also building a set of skills that can shape your success in the years to come. While good grades are essential, they’re not the only thing that counts. Enter the Universal Skills Builder Framework – your secret weapon for securing a bright future! Try our Skills Finder Game to learn how these core skills are used in different jobs and sectors.

The Universal Skills Builder Framework, developed by Skills Builder Partnership, is like a roadmap to success. It’s a collection of eight key skills that employers around the world highly value. These skills go beyond your academic achievements and are often referred to as “transferable skills” because they can be applied in various situations and jobs. They’re not just important for your career, but also for personal growth and effective communication.

The skills in the framework have been carefully chosen based on extensive research and input from employers across various industries. Employers have noticed that candidates with these skills tend to be adaptable, confident, and effective team members. As technology evolves and job markets change, having these transferable skills becomes even more crucial because they enable you to learn, unlearn, and relearn as needed.

Our ‘Skills Finder’ Game Fast Play Flashcards allow you to work in small groups to think about how these core transferable skills can relate to different jobs and careers – encouraging you to think quickly and showcase your knowledge of sectors and industries. How many new jobs can you name? What do they involve and why are these skills so important?

How to use

This quick-fire group activity focuses on helping young people to consider the key skills sought after by employers and the wide variety of jobs for which each skill is important. It also encourages students to think about lots of different types of jobs – you may even come across some you’d never considered before!

Time to Play: 10 to 30 minutes

Setting Up: Print out the Skills Flashcards on A4 and cut in half across the middle. Fold over each card to show the skill (e.g. Listening) on the front, and the description (why it’s important etc.) or pictures/icon (e.g. leadership and teamwork) on the back. Provide a few of each flashcard on each table. Ask students to work in pairs or small groups.

Instructions:

Using the ‘Skills Finder’ flashcards, ask students to think about the jobs or sectors where this skill may be required. For example, ‘Problem-Solving’ may be an important skill in industries such as engineering, software development or research, and it may be required for jobs such as Social Worker, Project Manager or Retail Assistant.

You could ask students to stand up or simply go round in a circle, saying their answer in turn. Fast answers only! Slow responses, duplicates or hesitations are eliminated!

Following the game, you can use the discussion topics below to prompt a wider conversation about what they have learnt:

• How many different job roles did you come up with?
• Where there any jobs or industries you had not heard of before?
• Pick a few examples of unusual jobs or sectors and ask students what they know about them.
• What do each of these jobs do? Which sectors or job families do they belong to?
• Are these jobs or sectors in-demand?
• Which local employers do students know that may recruit these jobs?
• Do students know any friends or family members that work in these jobs or industries?

Students can then turn over the flashcards and you can prompt further discussion around:

• Why these skills are important
• How you would demonstrate this skill (i.e. how do you know when some is a good team player?)
• What examples do students have of developing this skill? How would they evidence it in an interview or application?
• What other jobs or careers could it lead onto?

These flashcards have been developed based on the core skills identified in the Universal Skills Builder Framework. You could now invite students to assess their own skills levels by completing the questionnaire on their website.