Product/industrial design : Your skills

Product/industrial design courses combine theoretical and practical activities. Alongside the academic and technical knowledge developed through your studies, you also gain other skills highly valued by employers not only in the engineering and manufacturing sectors but also in other sectors too.

Examples of these skills include:

• presentation skills - including presentations to your fellow students, as well as planning and setting up visual displays at exhibitions;
• communication skills - written, oral and visual. These can be developed through oral and visual presentations and team projects. You are likely to be dealing with critiques of your own work and possibly that of your fellow students;
• commercial and entrepreneurial skills - you may be involved in initiating and developing small-scale business ideas and producing actual products or services to sell. This will involve skills in cost effectiveness, marketing and production management;
• problem-solving - the ability to analyse a problem and to produce a creative solution;
• using your initiative and working independently, but also being able to work as part of a team;
• general IT skills and more specialist ones such as computer-aided design (CAD). CAD is one of the key tools used by designers and can be used in a range of settings.

Consider the skills developed on your course as well as through your other activities, such as paid work, volunteering, family responsibilities, sport, membership of societies, leadership roles, etc. Think about how these can be used as evidence of your skills and personal attributes. Then you can start to market and sell who you really are, identify what you may be lacking and consider how to improve your profile. Take a look at job application advice for some useful tips.