Making the Most of University: Skills That Matter

Roughly three-quarters of employers now use skills-based hiring — assessing demonstrated capabilities alongside or instead of academic credentials. Making the most of your university degree is no longer about the qualification alone — it’s the skills you build alongside it.

There is a quiet myth at the centre of UK student life: that a good degree is, by itself, what gets you the next thing. Twenty years ago that was closer to true. Today it isn’t. Employers increasingly hire on the basis of skills rather than just credentials, and a generation of graduates who treat their degree as the entire investment are arriving in final year wondering why their CV says nothing more interesting than the name of their course. The fix is not to do more — that way burnout lies — but to use the time you are already spending more deliberately, so that across three or four years you build the experiences and the evidence that the world after university actually rewards.

This guide is the practical version of how to do that. It covers why the degree is no longer enough on its own, the skills employers consistently rate, how to build those skills through your course, what societies and committee roles actually give you, the role of part-time work, internships and volunteering, building relationships with academic staff, tracking and articulating what you’ve done — and the long-arc framing that beats final-year scrambling. It is written for students at any year, and it sits closely with graduate jobs (the destination) and societies and clubs (one of the main routes there).

Why the degree isn’t enough on its own

Skills-based hiring is rising

The most consequential shift in graduate hiring over the last decade has been the rise of skills-based hiring. Recent surveys suggest a substantial share of employers — by some measures a majority — now place direct weight on demonstrated capabilities alongside (or instead of) academic credentials. The trend has accelerated noticeably year on year, and it is the underlying reason why a CV that says only “BSc in X, 2:1” sells you short, however hard you worked for the grade.

What that means for graduates

Practically, it means employers are increasingly asking what you can do rather than only what you know, and they are designing their recruitment around it — competency questions (“tell us about a time when…”), assessment-centre exercises, work-style and personality measures, technical tests, sometimes portfolio reviews. The degree is now the price of entry to the conversation, not the answer to it. None of that makes the degree pointless. It does make the only-the-degree approach an avoidable handicap.

The honest framing

The framing this guide rests on is honest rather than alarmist. You do not need to “do everything.” You need to spend the same time you would have spent at university anyway in a way that also builds skills, builds evidence, and builds the small network of contacts and references that the next stage runs on. The students who walk out of university with strong CVs are rarely working harder than the ones who don’t; they are mostly making a few small deliberate choices about where their non-academic time goes.

The skills employers actually want

The lists vary by survey, but a consistent core shows up.

Problem-solving and analytical thinking

Across nearly every employer survey, problem-solving and analytical ability sit near the top. By some measures, around eight in ten employers rate problem-solving as something they want from graduates, with analytical ability close behind. These are not abstract qualities — they are the daily activity of much knowledge work: defining a problem, breaking it down, generating options, evaluating them, recommending action. A degree teaches some of this, but it is not the same as evidencing it through specific projects.

Teamwork and communication

Teamwork and communication appear in roughly the same band of importance, with three-quarters or more of employers consistently asking for both. The fact that these are “soft skills” does not make them soft to assess: employers structure their assessment centres specifically around them, and “this candidate is technically strong but doesn’t work well with others” is a real and common rejection.

Writing and articulation

Written communication — clear, concise, accurate writing — comes up reliably as one of the most desired hard skills on graduate CVs. This is not just an arts-and-humanities point; technical and scientific employers care about written communication too, because so much of work depends on clear documentation, reports, briefings and emails. Universities give you four or five years of constant writing practice; treat it as the skill it is, not as the medium for assessment.

Initiative and adaptability

Initiative and adaptability — sometimes captured as “drive,” “self-starter,” “willingness to take ownership” — show up consistently as the qualities that distinguish strong candidates within a shortlist of technically competent ones. They are also among the harder qualities to fake at an interview, which is why employers design assessments to look for them in your past behaviour rather than your present claims.

Skill	How it gets assessed in hiring	How to evidence it
Problem-solving	Case exercises, competency questions, assessment centres	A specific project where you defined and solved a problem
Analytical thinking	Numerical / verbal reasoning tests, written exercises	Quantitative coursework, data-led work, a dissertation finding
Teamwork	Group exercises, “tell us about a time when…”	A society/committee project, group coursework, sports team
Communication (verbal)	Interviews, presentations, group exercises	Seminar leadership, society talks, presentations
Communication (written)	CVs, cover letters, written exercises	Strong written assessments, dissertation, articles or blogs
Initiative	Behavioural questions, examples in your CV	Founding/leading something, taking on a role nobody else would
Adaptability	Behavioural questions, situational tests	A placement, a year abroad, a part-time role you grew in

Building skills through your course

The good news, before any extracurricular involvement: your course itself is one of the biggest skill-building containers you have, and most students under-use it.

Seminars and the case for participation

Seminars are not just academic events; they are also the closest thing to a workplace discussion you encounter at university. Preparing, contributing, building on what other people say, disagreeing respectfully — this is what professional meetings look like, and seminar participation builds the muscle that interview panels notice. Even your tutors’ written references often comment on it. The students who push through the initial discomfort of speaking up — covered in the lectures and seminars guide — gain a real, transferable skill, not just better marks.

Essays and dissertations as evidence

Each essay or dissertation is, in employer-relevant terms, a small project: you defined a question, planned a response, gathered evidence, structured an argument, communicated it in writing under a deadline. Most students never describe their academic work in those terms, but it is exactly the language graduate-job applications ask for. Your strongest pieces of academic work — and especially your dissertation — can be repurposed into CV bullets and “tell us about a time when…” answers, if you have noticed them as projects rather than only as marks.

Group projects, presentations, lab work

For courses with group projects, presentations, lab work or fieldwork, the employer-relevant evidence is right there in the curriculum: collaborating with people you didn’t choose, dividing work, hitting a deadline, presenting outcomes. The trick is to remember them as experiences rather than as items you ticked off. Keeping a brief note as you go — what was the project, what role did you play, what happened, what did you take away — turns these into ready-made material later (see the tracking section below).

Academic staff who know you

Beyond the work itself, your academic staff are part of the value of the degree. Tutors who know you can write a substantive reference rather than a generic one, can suggest opportunities, can occasionally connect you to industry or alumni contacts. Building a working relationship with your personal tutor and one or two academics in your subject — by going to office hours occasionally, by asking questions, by engaging seriously with feedback — costs little and pays off in ways that are not always immediately visible.

Societies, committee roles and clubs as CV evidence

If there is a single piece of advice that does the most for an undergraduate’s eventual CV, it is to take a society seriously. Not all of them, and not at the cost of your degree — one or two, properly.

Why these are CV gold

A society gives you something academic work alone doesn’t easily produce: visible, ownable evidence of working with others on something you chose, over time, with outcomes. Recruiters notice. Employers consistently rate “involvement beyond academic work” in their graduate-recruitment criteria, and they ask about it at interview. A society does not have to be glamorous to count — a hobby society where you ran the social calendar for a year produces just as much CV evidence as a flashy professional society where you sat on the committee in name only.

Committee roles specifically

The leap from “member of society X” to “committee member of society X” is one of the highest-return moves at university for your future CV. A committee role usually involves managing some combination of: a small budget, an event calendar, a team of fellow committee members, promotion to a wider membership, problem-solving when things go wrong, and continuity with the next year’s committee. Those are direct rehearsals of skills the graduate job market explicitly asks about. The societies and clubs guide covers committees in detail; the point for this article is that committee roles are not nice-to-haves, they are some of the strongest CV material you can build at university.

The social-capital point

A final note here, which the class divide guide covers in more depth. Research consistently suggests that students from more advantaged backgrounds more often engage in societies and committee roles strategically, treating them as a deliberate way to build social and cultural capital. Students from widening-participation backgrounds are less likely to participate and less likely to fully see the value employers attach to that participation. The takeaway is not that you have to grind societies for your CV — but that the value is there, it is open to you, and treating it as such is part of how the participation gap closes. UCAS sets out what employers look for in graduates, and society and committee experience runs through almost every part of the answer.

Part-time work, internships and volunteering

Part-time work as more than money

Part-time work during term or summer is more than a way of plugging the gap between the maintenance loan and the real cost of living. Even apparently unrelated jobs — retail, hospitality, tutoring, university student-ambassador roles — develop transferable skills employers value: customer-facing communication, working under pressure, reliability, handling money, working in a team. Many graduates report that their first part-time job taught them more about workplaces than any academic module. Treat any role as material to mine, not just a wage.

Internships and placements

A relevant internship or placement is the single most reliable thing you can do for your future graduate-job prospects, especially if you are aiming at a competitive sector. The graduate jobs guide covers the timing (often a year earlier than students expect) and the conversion patterns (many large employers convert a substantial share of their summer interns straight to graduate scheme offers). The summer between second year and final year is the prime internship window for most students; planning ahead in second year is the move.

Volunteering and structured programmes

Volunteering does two things at once: it builds genuine skills (often more than people expect — running a regular charity activity is small-scale operations management) and it signals values that some employers actively look for. Beyond ad-hoc volunteering, structured programmes like Year Here, the Civil Service Fast Stream’s diversity routes, sector-specific access programmes and university-led volunteering schemes can give you both depth of experience and visibility to employers. None of this is required, but if you are picking which non-academic time to invest, volunteering is often under-rated relative to its impact.

Academic staff and references

Building working relationships with tutors

Most graduate-job and master’s applications ask for academic references, and the difference between a generic reference and a substantive one is real. The simple way to set yourself up well: pick one or two academics in your subject — your personal tutor, a tutor whose seminars you’ve enjoyed, a dissertation supervisor — and engage genuinely with their work. Go to office hours occasionally; ask substantive questions; take feedback seriously. This isn’t ingratiation; it’s letting people get to know you well enough to write about you with specifics.

What staff references actually do

A strong reference will name specific work of yours, specific qualities you demonstrated, and specific evidence — not just “X was a diligent student.” Recruiters and admissions committees read a lot of references and the substantive ones stand out. The other thing a strong reference can do, more quietly, is open doors: a tutor with industry or academic contacts can occasionally connect you to opportunities, sometimes ones that aren’t widely advertised.

Keeping in touch beyond graduation

A small thing worth doing as you graduate: stay in touch with the staff who have made the biggest difference to your degree. A brief email a year or two after graduating telling them what you ended up doing, with thanks, is small and unusual enough to be remembered. References don’t expire on the day of graduation; the academic staff who knew you well can write for you for years.

Tracking and articulating what you’ve done

This is the unsexy but high-return part of the article.

A simple system for recording experience as you go

Keep a single document, somewhere reliable, where you note things as they happen. Each entry is short: project or role, dates, what you actually did, what happened (the outcome), what you took away. A society event, a group project, a part-time-job moment where you handled something well — all of it. The point is not to write a journal; it is to capture the raw material before you forget the specifics, because final-year-you will not remember the details of first-year-you, and the specifics are exactly what employer applications need.

Turning experience into CV bullets and “tell us about a time…” answers

The STAR structure — Situation, Task, Action, Result — is the standard scaffolding for competency answers and CV bullets, and it is the standard for a reason. A bullet or answer in STAR shape is concrete (a specific situation), shows your role (the task you owned), names what you did (the action), and includes the outcome (the result). The tracking note above turns into STAR material with very little extra effort.

The longer arc

The students who walk into graduate hiring with the strongest material are almost never the ones who built it in a frantic final-year push. They are the ones who recorded the small things from first year onwards, and so arrive with a year-by-year body of evidence to draw on. Starting the document this week, even if you are already past first year, is worth doing — because two years of records beats no records, and what you record now compounds.

Starting early, not doing everything

The long arc

The students who get the most out of university are not the busiest ones — they are the ones who are doing a small number of things well, across a long enough period to compound. A society membership you held for three years and grew into a committee role is worth far more than five societies you joined in October and never returned to. The same applies to academic engagement, part-time work, and relationships with staff: depth beats breadth, and time is the multiplier.

Deliberate, not frantic

There is a particular form of student burnout that comes from trying to do everything at once because everything sounds like it might be CV-relevant. It produces neither happy students nor strong CVs. The better move is to pick deliberately: one or two societies you actually care about (with the realistic possibility of a committee role later), engagement with the course beyond ticking through assessments, a relationship with one or two academic staff, a part-time job or internship as the right point in your degree. That is enough — and far easier to sustain than the everything approach.

Protecting your wellbeing

A note that should not need saying, but does: none of this is worth your wellbeing. If you are sliding into burnout, the CV is not the urgent thing — your sleep, your relationships, and your ability to keep going through three or four years is. The student mental health and emotional wellbeing guide covers the supports; the relevant point here is that any “make the most of university” framing that costs you your ability to function is not making the most of anything. Sustainable engagement is what produces a strong CV and a graduate at the end of it who is in shape to use it.

Conclusion

A degree alone is no longer the answer to “what do I do after university?” — but you do not need to “do everything” to make up for that. What you need is to use the same time you were already going to spend at university more deliberately. Take seminars seriously, because they build the discussion skills employers test for. Treat each essay and your dissertation as projects with real transferable skills inside them. Get to know one or two academic staff well enough that they can write you a substantive reference. Pick one or two societies and stay long enough to grow into a committee role — because that is where the most ownable CV evidence comes from. Use your part-time work, internships and volunteering as material, not just income. Build a simple system for recording what you’ve done as you go, because final-year-you will not remember the specifics. And start early, deliberately rather than frantically, protecting your wellbeing along the way — because the students with the strongest CVs are almost always the ones who did a few things well over years, not many things briefly.

The single most useful thing you can do today is small: open a single document somewhere reliable, and write down the three most useful things you’ve done at university so far — project, role, outcome. That document, kept up across the rest of your degree, is the foundation of every CV and interview answer you’ll need.

For where this leads, graduate jobs covers the destination, postgraduate and masters study covers the further-study route, and the student life hub brings everything together.

Frequently asked questions

What skills do employers want from graduates?
Surveys consistently put problem-solving, analytical thinking, teamwork, communication (written and verbal), and initiative at the top — with a clear majority of employers rating each as something they specifically look for. The lists vary in details; the core is stable.

What should I do at university to improve my job prospects?
Use your course deliberately (seminars, essays, group projects, a substantive dissertation), take a couple of societies seriously enough to grow into a committee role, mine any part-time work for transferable skills, do a relevant internship or placement if a competitive sector is on your list, and keep a record of what you’ve done so you have material to draw on later.

Are societies actually useful for my CV?
Yes — particularly committee roles. A committee role usually involves managing a budget, events, a team, communication, and problem-solving when things go wrong, all of which directly map onto skills graduate employers ask about. The societies and clubs guide covers how to join and progress.

Should I get a part-time job?
If your time and degree allow, often yes — both for the money and for the transferable skills (customer-facing communication, working under pressure, reliability, teamwork). Even apparently unrelated jobs build CV material that graduate employers explicitly ask about.

How do I build a relationship with my tutors?
Engage with the work, go to office hours occasionally with substantive questions, take feedback seriously and act on it, and stay in touch beyond a single course or year. The aim is for them to know you well enough to write specifically about you, not generally — a small amount of consistent engagement does most of the work.

When should I start thinking about employability?
From early in your degree, not in final year. The students with the strongest material in their final-year applications usually built it across years one to three. Starting in second year is good; starting earlier is better; starting late and catching up is still possible — just more compressed.

How do I avoid doing too much?
By choosing deliberately rather than reactively. Two societies you stay with for years beat five you joined and dropped. Engagement with one or two academic staff beats trying to know every lecturer. A part-time job at the right intensity beats trying to also do three of everything. Sustainable depth beats unsustainable breadth, every time.

References

• UCAS. (n.d.). What do employers look for in graduates? https://www.ucas.com/careers/getting-job/what-do-employers-look-graduates
• Unitemps. (n.d.). The eight graduate skills employers want. https://www.unitemps.com/career-advice/the-eight-graduate-skills-employers-want/

Further reading

• UCAS: what do employers look for in graduates? — UK-focused guidance on the skills graduate employers explicitly seek.
• Unitemps: the eight graduate skills employers want — practical breakdown of the core skill set and how to evidence each.
• anonfess: Graduate jobs, careers and internships · Societies and clubs at university · Lectures and seminars · The class divide at university · Student mental health and emotional wellbeing