Employers aren’t hiring based on test scores.
They’re looking for strong communicators, dependable team players, and adaptable problem-solvers.
Sure, most of today’s students leave school with varying degrees of academic knowledge, but even the top-performing learners tend to have little experience applying it in real-world contexts.
That disconnect shows up in the data. As of March 2025, 41% of recent college graduates (ages 22–27) and 33% of all degree holders (ages 22–65) are underemployed, working in jobs that don’t require a college degree. And it’s not just a temporary setback; graduates who start out underemployed are about 3.5 times more likely to remain that way a decade later.
Meanwhile, the perception gap between educators and employers is just as stark:
- 92% of higher ed leaders say their institutions prepare students well for careers, but only 11% of business leaders agree.
- Among public high school educators, just 21% believe their college-bound students are “very prepared” for success, and only 10% say the same for students headed straight into the workforce.
These numbers point to something deeper than a curriculum misalignment. By and large, students are lacking the essential, real-world skills employers expect—skills like collaboration, critical thinking, professionalism, and resilience.
It’s like sending them out into the world with the latest smartphone but forgetting to charge the battery. The potential is there, but without power, it doesn’t go far.
That’s why employability skills matter to high school leaders, CTE educators, and district decision-makers: if we want students to succeed after graduation, we can’t treat such skills as electives nor except students to pick them up through extra-curricular activities. Employers see them as crucial, so we need to teach them with the same intention and consistency we bring to academic content.
What are employability skills, and why should educators care?
Also known as essential skills, soft skills, or power skills, the U.S. Department of Education defines nine core employability skills that are essential for success across all academic subject areas, professional industries, and careers.
Meet the nine skills:
- Applied academic skills help students take what they’ve learned in class (like writing essays, solving math problems, and understanding scientific ideas) and apply them to professional settings.
- Critical thinking skills enable future employees to make sense of information, think through problems, stay organized, and make good decisions on the job.
- Interpersonal skills turn students into valuable team players who can collaborate effectively, maintain a positive attitude, and contribute to workplace goals.
- Personal qualities help learners build strong working relationships through skills like self-discipline, flexibility, integrity, initiative, and a willingness to learn.
- Resource management skills allow employees to make smart use of their time, tools, and materials.
- Information use helps workers locate various types of information, unpack it, and make informed decisions based on it.
- Communication skills enable employees to convey information, opinions, and ideas in multiple formats, including written and verbal communication.
- Systems thinking skills allow students to see the bigger picture and understand how different pieces of a process or organization fit together.
- Technology use skills enable employees to choose the right digital tools, use them effectively, and adapt as technology evolves.
Employability skills are important not just for a student’s individual career success but also for the health of the nation’s entire economy.
That claim might sound grandiose, but it’s backed by data. One study projects that the United States will miss out on $1.748 trillion in revenue due to a lack of quality workers by 2030. That’s nearly 6% of the nation’s economy! Meanwhile, 92% of employers say that when it comes to evaluating candidates, employability skills matter as much, if not more, than technical or “hard” skills.
What’s more, employability skills can help students succeed at any age, including long before they graduate and hone their resumes.
- Skills like time management help learners juggle homework, extracurricular activities, and part-time jobs.
- Communication and collaboration make group projects smoother and more rewarding.
- Personal qualities like self-discipline and resilience support mental health and academic persistence.
- Technology skills can help students edit a video for a school project and manage their digital footprint on social media.
- Critical thinking and information-use skills are useful for evaluating sources, forming strong arguments in essays, and making informed lifestyle choices.
These benefits carry forward to college, technical training programs, and beyond. Time management, planning, and information use, for example, help students persist through academic and professional stress, interpersonal challenges, and major life transitions. Plus, college students who are confident in their employability skills report feeling more prepared academically, and they’re more likely to stay enrolled through graduation.
In short, these are the skills that help students launch themselves into new and rewarding experiences and keep moving forward.
How can education leaders and administrators lend support?
Districts, principals, and curriculum leaders can help fuel an environment wherein employability skills thrive by:
- Encouraging cross-subject alignment around the same skills so students see consistency across courses.
- Providing professional development and examples for embedding reflection, peer feedback, and group roles.
- Making employability skills visible through bulletin boards, awards for demonstration of initiative or teamwork, or student reflections shared in school newsletters.
Ten Simple Ways to Teach Employability Skills
You don’t need a foundational overhaul to help students build and advance employability skills. Here are ten actionable, classroom-ready ideas:
1. Embed reflection with purpose.
Ask students to reflect on how they handled group dynamics, deadlines, or setbacks. Doing so can help build their self-awareness, initiative, and responsibility.
2. Make group work real.
Give students structured roles (like project manager, researcher, or presenter) and require peer and/or self-assessment. It will help them practice communication, collaboration, deadline management, and professionalism. For ready-to-use role examples, check out our free guide, which connects group roles to the 14 Career Clusters within The National Career Clusters® Framework.
3. Ask open-ended questions.
At the end of a lesson or group activity, ask students one question like, “What’s one way you contributed to your group?” or “How did you adapt when a teammate disagreed?” These prompts encourage accountability and reflection, key components of self-management and adaptability.
4. Offer peer feedback gently.
Train students to provide one strength and one area to grow when reviewing their peers’ work or presentations. That builds communication skills while normalizing constructive feedback.
5. Integrate mini-presentations.
Have students give short (one or two-minute) verbal updates on their works-in-progress. It may seem odd to them at first, but once it becomes a habit, it’ll build public speaking skills, teach them to convey ideas clearly under time limits, and foster their confidence.
6. Rotate leadership responsibilities.
During recurring group activities, assign a different student to lead discussions, keep time, or summarize findings. Rotation gives everyone a chance to practice different skills, including leadership, organization, and decision-making.
7. Link content to workplace scenarios.
When introducing a new concept, frame it with a quick real-world example, like “A marketing team might use this skill when…” or “An engineer would need to…” Connecting lessons to careers strengthens students’ ability to transfer learning to professional contexts.
8. Practice active listening.
Pair students for short discussions and have them summarize their partner’s key points before responding. It’s an exercise aimed at sharpening listening, comprehension, and respectful communication
9. Build quick problem-solving challenges.
Present a brief scenario that’s realistic and applicable to multiple industries (for example: “The event starts in 30 minutes, and the speaker just canceled. What’s your plan?”) and have students brainstorm solutions in small groups. This builds adaptability, creativity, and teamwork.
10. Run instruction drills.
Have one student give step-by-step directions for a task (such as drawing a simple picture or assembling a tool) while others follow them exactly. This strengthens clarity, attention to detail, and audience awareness.
Want to save these tips? Check out the infographic—free to download: here.
Meet our ready-made employability skills solution.
If you’ve ever wished for a resource you could use tomorrow without rewriting every lesson plan, the P2C Employability Skills Playlist is exactly that. As part of P2C Career Explorer, the highly flexible curriculum gives teachers and counselors a ready-to-go way to help students build essential employability skills, skills that matter as much as academic knowledge in today’s workforce.
The playlist includes 27 lessons across three levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. It covers all nine core skills defined by the U.S. Department of Education. Each lesson is:
✔️ Designed for grades 9–12 but easy to adapt for younger students
✔️ Rooted in real-world examples with prompts written for students, not textbooks
✔️ Flexible enough to use as a full module or to pull individual lessons when they fit best
How to Get Started
No matter how impressive their test scores, course grades, or extra-curricular accomplishments, no student is truly career-ready without employability skills.
High school educators are uniquely positioned to teach these skills as an integral part of students’ education through group projects, reflections, presentations, and real-world tasks.
For a firsthand look at how employability skills can be taught as a core part of learning, explore the P2C Employability Skills Playlist through its table of contents. Downloading it provides a clear overview of all 27 lessons across the nine core skills and shows how they are structured for seamless classroom integration.
