# Graduate Attributes: What They Mean and How to Prove You Have Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability/graduate-attributes/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability/graduate-attributes.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving building self-awareness at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Graduate attributes are the qualities your university aims to build beyond your subject. Learn what they mean, whether employers care, and how to evidence them. ## Key facts - Title: Graduate Attributes: What They Mean and How to Prove You Have Them - Category: Employability - Primary skill: Building Self-Awareness - Related skills: Communication, Teamwork - Primary keyword: graduate attributes - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability/graduate-attributes/ ## What this page covers - Graduate attributes are the qualities your university aims to build beyond your subject. Learn what they mean, whether employers care, and how to evidence them. - Practical guidance for graduate attributes - How this topic connects to Building Self-Awareness ## Detailed explanation Graduate attributes are the qualities, skills and understandings a university wants its students to develop by graduation, beyond subject knowledge: communicating, collaborating, thinking globally. Each university writes its own list. The attributes describe what your degree aims to build, and employers judge them by the evidence you can show. That last part is where the term starts to matter. The list in your handbook can read like a portrait of someone you were supposed to become, with nobody checking whether you did. The more useful questions are practical ones: which attributes you can already back up, how to put them in an employer's language, and what to do about the ones that still feel thin. Each of them has a straight answer. ## Why do universities have graduate attributes? The most widely cited definition comes from Bowden and colleagues' 2000 report *Generic Capabilities of ATN University Graduates*: graduate attributes are "the qualities, skills and understandings a university community agrees its students should develop during their time with the institution." The important word is *agrees*. A university decides what its graduates should be able to do beyond their subject, and then tries to build those qualities into its teaching, assessment and placements. That makes the list a statement of intent, not a certificate. It tells you what your degree is designed to develop. It does not tell you what you personally developed, because two students on the same course can take very different things from the same [group project](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/group-work-skills/). Treat your university's attributes as a map of where to look for evidence, not as proof that you already have it. ## What are some examples of graduate attributes? Because each university writes its own list, the examples vary. Bond University groups its attributes around being a Capable Individual, an Effective Collaborator and a Global Citizen. The University of Hertfordshire describes its graduates as professionally focused, globally minded and sustainability driven. Even across those two lists, a pattern shows: the attributes describe how you manage yourself, how you work with other people, and how you relate to the wider world. Very little of it is subject knowledge. That is also why the lists read as abstract. "Effective collaborator" names an outcome, not a behavior. To make an attribute usable, translate it into something a person could watch you do. In practice, an effective collaborator is the one who delivers their part on time, shares what they know, and disagrees about the work without making it personal. ## Are graduate attributes the same as employability skills? They overlap heavily, and the two terms are often used interchangeably, but they look at the same ground from opposite ends. Graduate attributes describe what a university intends to develop. Employability, in Yorke and Knight's definition, is "a set of achievements, understandings and personal attributes that make individuals more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations." One is about what the degree sets out to build; the other is about what makes you more likely to be hired and to do well once you are. Ruth Bridgstock, writing in *Higher Education Research & Development* in 2009, argues that employability involves far more than possessing graduate attributes. The piece she identifies as overlooked is career management: knowing which attributes to develop, where to use them, and how to present them. For you, that means the list is where the work starts rather than where it ends. Holding the attributes is one half. Directing and evidencing them is the other. ## Do employers actually care about them? They care about what the attributes describe. Your university's exact wording matters much less, because an employer reads your evidence, not your institution's list. The University of Northampton's graduate attributes guide notes that employers often put attitude and interpersonal skills ahead of job knowledge, and are prepared to "[hire for attitude](/knowledge/employability/soft-skills-employers-want/), and train for skill." The logic is practical: an employer can teach you its systems after you start, but how you work with others and manage yourself is much harder to train. Employers also judge those qualities in context. A 2020 study of graduate recruiters by Crowley and Jeske, published in the *British Journal of Guidance and Counselling*, found that fit to the job, the team and the organization's values is increasingly important. So the real question is not whether you are a good communicator in general, but whether you will communicate well in this team, on this kind of work. Evidence that matches the role lands better than evidence that is merely true. ## How do I know which attributes I actually have? Go through your university's list one attribute at a time and, for each, try to name a specific situation where you showed it, what you did, and who saw it. Where you can name all three quickly, the attribute is probably real. Where you reach for a general sentence instead, such as "I'm a strong team player," you have found either a gap or evidence you have not yet recognized. Two checks keep the audit honest. First, separate the attributes you use with energy and get results from, which point to your [natural strengths](/knowledge/setting-goals/focus-on-your-strengths/), from the ones you can claim only because you passed the module meant to build them. Second, ask someone who has watched you work, such as a placement supervisor, a tutor or a teammate, what you do well and what you could do differently next time. Their answer often shows you something you cannot see from the inside. If you want a structured starting point next to that audit, the free Job Skills Test gives you [a baseline for your skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), and anything that comes out low is a habit you can practice, not a fixed limit. ## How do I show them in a job application or interview? With specific examples, because that is what graduate interviews ask for. The University of Glasgow's careers service notes that [competency-based questions](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/interpersonal-skills-interview/) are currently the most common graduate interview format, and that students are often unable to demonstrate evidence of the attributes being sought, or to explain why the position appeals to them. A competency question asks about a real past situation, so a claimed attribute without a story behind it earns little credit. Build each example in three parts: the situation, what you specifically did, and what changed as a result. Then choose the examples that fit the role. If the job involves client contact, a story about explaining something complicated to a non-specialist beats a story about a polished essay. Prepare for the second half of that warning as well: know why this particular role appeals to you, and connect it to the attribute you are evidencing. Manchester Metropolitan University advises students that including evidence of how they have developed their attributes helps them talk about their achievements at interview. A running note, updated after each project, placement or student job, saves you from reconstructing examples under pressure. ## What if my university's list doesn't match the job ad? It usually matches more than it seems, because both describe behavior, just in different vocabularies. The mismatch can still shake you. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work put the doubt this way: > What have I actually learned? If a job ad says you must be able to do these calculations, or brief a manager this way — those are the things I should have learned, and we didn't. Sometimes it feels like the emperor's new clothes. That doubt deserves an answer rather than reassurance. A job ad lists tasks, while your university lists qualities, so the two rarely line up word for word. The practical move is to translate. Take each requirement in the ad, name the behavior underneath it, and look for a moment in your studies or work where you showed that behavior. Where you find one, you have an example. Where you do not, you have a specific thing to practice before you apply, which is far easier to act on than a general feeling of not measuring up. ## How can I develop them while I'm still studying? Use the places you already are as practice grounds: group projects, student jobs, placements, society roles and volunteering. Pick one attribute at a time and look for a low-stakes chance to use it deliberately, such as presenting your group's findings, running the planning for a shared assignment, or asking for feedback after a placement task. Attributes grow through repetition and feedback, not through rereading the list. This is also where Bridgstock's point about career management becomes concrete. Decide which attributes matter most for the kind of work you want, put your practice there first, and write down what happened each time. A single term of deliberate practice on two attributes, with notes, gives you more interview material than three years of hoping the degree did it for you. ## The skills that make your attributes visible Look back across those eight answers and the same moves keep returning: an honest look at what you can actually do, a clear way of saying it, and proof that comes from working with other people. **Building Self-Awareness** is what turns the list from a description of the graduate your university intended into an honest inventory of the one you are. It starts with your natural strengths, the attributes you use with energy and get results from, as opposed to the ones you can merely claim. Then it adds what you cannot see alone. Asking a supervisor, tutor or teammate for specific, forward-looking feedback, and listening to it before you defend yourself, is the fastest way to find a blind spot before an interviewer does. That is evidence about behavior, gathered on purpose, not a personality label. **Communication** is the attribute that is easiest to assume you already have, because your degree has given you plenty of practice, mostly in its academic form: long essays, assessed presentations, careful citation. The workplace version runs on different habits. Put the main point first, keep it brief, adapt to the person in front of you, and speak up in a meeting rather than saving your view for the write-up. That shift pays twice, because it is also how every other attribute becomes visible: a clear, short answer to a competency question is communication at work. **Teamwork** is the attribute you will most likely evidence with a group project, so it helps to know what the workplace version asks for. Splitting the slides four ways and merging them the night before is coordination, not collaboration. Teamwork means being excellent at your own part, putting the shared goal ahead of your own grade, building trust by doing what you said you would, and disagreeing about the work rather than the person. It also means committing to a decision you argued against. Hold your group experiences up to that standard and you will know which stories to tell and which habits to work on. The Job Skills Test measures all three, and it is free. Because they sit inside **a set of twelve work skills** that the test covers in full, the result shows you [which skill to lead with](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/): your strongest is the attribute to put first in applications, and your weakest is a learnable habit to work on while group projects and placements still give you low-stakes chances to try. ## Where your evidence already is A few of these attributes may already be part of your ordinary week, just without the label. If you can name the group project where you chased the missing section so the deadline held, or the comment from a placement supervisor that changed how you worked, that is a competency answer waiting to be written down. The attributes that still feel thin are the ones you have had fewer chances to practice, and practicing them changes what you do, not who you are. The distance between what a degree promises and what you can show tends to count for more at each step, from application to interview to your first months in a job, and it is also exactly the distance that practice closes. What helps now is knowing which of your attributes rest on skills you have built and which on skills you are still building. ## Find out which attributes you can already back up All that is left is to see where you actually stand. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills that takes 7 minutes: it rates you across all twelve and shows which ones will make the biggest difference as you move from your degree into your first job. Use the result to decide which attribute you evidence first in your next application, and which one you start practicing this month. **[Get my skills profile](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, results shown instantly.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Graduate attributes are the qualities your university aims to build beyond your subject. Learn what they mean, whether employers care, and how to evidence them. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Building Self-Awareness. It also relates to Communication, Teamwork. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/teamwork.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/employability/graduate-attributes/ Preferred summary: "Graduate attributes are the qualities your university aims to build beyond your subject. Learn what they mean, whether employers care, and how to evidence them." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.