GRADUATES are going to become increasingly familiar with the term "transferable skills" and its US-originating fellow-traveller, "permanent whitewater".

The two phrases refer to the challenges of the new workplace, where there is a growing emphasis on flexibility, communication skills, innovation, leadership, teamworking, problem-solving and management and organisational skills.

Graduates are now expected to be able to adapt and move into different areas as their job demands and to work as part of small teams or units. These skills are acquired not only through study but through extra-curricular activities, including involvement in clubs and societies while in college. Irish students still tend to undersell themselves in this area, failing to recognise the importance progressive firms are attaching to these "life skills".

These skills benefit not only the employer but the graduate as well. According to one US survey, young graduates can expect to change their careers up to nine times. Long-term job security is being eroded and contracts and freelancing are taking its place. In other words, self-confidence, independence and flexibility are likely to prove as important to new graduates as the piece of parchment which they take with them from their final conferring.