Decision Making [1]

One of the many Employability Skills, which can also be called or include 'Using your own initiative'. Can you make decisions, or do you have to rely on others to help you all the time?

Being able to show that you can make decisions within the right context is a good signal to send an employer. Good decision-making skills are also needed for being able to learn effectively. We are often faced with many choices throughout life, most are fortunately not life threatening or life changing, but will often be minor decisions that just helps to give some sense of order and structure to everyday life – whether at home, work or during a learning process.

If you haven’t had much opportunity to make decisions then start at a basic level; how about deciding on what’s on your weekly (or monthly) food shop (maybe basing your decision on calories, healthiness of the food, locality of the food etc.), or imagine a type of decision you would make in the workplace, such as the type and timing of the next fertiliser application, if you were in a position to do so.

Maybe you want to reduce your energy use and save some money; decide how you might go about this, which might vary for work and homelife. If there is more than one person going to be affected by your decision it is important that everyone is involved and consulted to make sure it is a reasonable solution that you come up with.

Wording that is often used to illustrate this employability skill is “The ability to use own initiative and know when to seek advice”, so watch for that on a person specification.

If you can think of an example of using your own initiative that also includes other employability skills, then this would provide a good demonstration of what an employer seeks from an employee. For example, can you explain how using your initiative involved either: