Need

When it comes to finding a job and encouraging emerging professionals to excel in their new career path, making sure that graduates have the skills they need for the position plays an essential role. Students who do not have the necessary skills will quickly find themselves struggling in their new position. They may start to lose confidence and feel unsure about what to do. The businesses that hire them will also feel frustrated as they lose money and time. They find themselves training new employees who do not have the insight and practical knowledge they need to do what they were hired to do.

"Vocational education and training, allows students to gain practical experience in their chosen career path before they even graduate." Students who finish those rigorous programs, have the credentials and training they need to get started right away in their chosen career path. Not only do the students feel confident in their abilities, but the employers themselves know that they have made a solid choice in their new hire and can count on them to begin excelling in the position quickly.

The importance of vocational training for career development
For those interested in the benefits of vocational education for job training and career preparation, here are some of the key positives for both students and employers with this type of career-preparation path.

Skill development and employability
Vocational learning opportunities play a critical role in skill development and employability. The importance of vocational development can largely be summed up as the difference between theoretical knowledge vs. practical skills. In non-vocational studies, students often spend hours of their time exploring a variety of different subjects. Their class time tends to be only a few hours per week, as they will spend many hours in the library and on computers conducting research and writing papers that help them continue to build their theoretical knowledge in a variety of fields.

Even within their chosen discipline, they often spend a significant amount of time exploring theory, ideas, and procedures used by other professionals in the industry. They have significantly fewer opportunities to actually put these ideas to work compared to students going through a vocational education situation. The skills for work and vocational pathways are significantly limited for these students, as their theoretical knowledge does not have the work experience that helps them transition from a classroom study topic into their actual profession. This can sometimes cause challenges when the students graduate and transition into the working world.

However, for students in a vocational education and training setting, this situation gets corrected. Students spend hours in the practical workshops each week learning hands-on practical skills related to their chosen field. Class time tends to increase in these schools, compared to their outside research time, because students spend more time exploring actual work opportunities that prepare them for their future jobs. They do not focus as much time on researching the theoretical as learning the practical.

Students also have courses that will walk them through chances to use the highly specialized equipment and spaces that they need to do their jobs well. Rather than simply learning about this type of equipment or how it might be useful in the job, they actually have the chance to try out their own skills while still in school. When the time comes for them to transition to an actual job, they have the experience they need to begin the job right away. They will not have to spend time learning how to physically operate the equipment on the job, allowing them to become a valuable employee and build a career faster.

The value of graduating with work skills
When employers look for new employees to join their institution, they know that they want to find someone who has the skills to do the job well and can adapt quickly to the work environment. Businesses spend a significant amount of money trying to onboard new employees, as they must go through a training process and anticipate that there will be a learning curve for the employee on a new job.

Vocational schools help with bridging the skills gap between work and education.
Students do not enter the work field with little practical experience regarding the tools and environments in which they will work. Instead, they have specifically worked in these situations throughout their education under the supervision of their trainers. This creates a more favorable employability skills assessment. Potential employers can look at the academic record of these students and know the type of skills they will already have when they first enter the building. This effect can be leveraged even more, when a training institution is applying a competency based training approach that is mapped with the industry's needs.

For those interested in learning how to enhance employability skills, therefore, the first solution should lie in vocational learning opportunities. These skills can help students learn the techniques and strategies that they specifically need for this area of work and ensure that they are prepared to succeed. Employers can feel confident that the candidates they receive from a quality school already have the experience and training they need to begin work right away.