This article is concerned with professional needs emerging from the French labour market and their implications in terms of university training. The authors carry out their analysis by looking at the implications for sustainable development. In particular, the paper emphasizes how educational programmes can be built to provide sustainable employability for students. University vocational programmes are conceived using the skills-based approach, considering such programmes as an intersection between knowledge and activities in terms of skills. After having set out in detail their analytical framework (definition of sustainable development, the skills approach and the notion of sustainable employability), the authors provide a methodology for addressing the links between job activities, skills and training schemes. This methodology consists of several steps: first, they identify job sectors and levels of management; second, they translate jobs into key skills; third, they build educational programmes based on these key skills. The paper emphasizes the multidimensionality of the approach and its contribution to our understanding of the relationship between the missions of universities, professional needs and individuals' professional paths. (Contains 1 table, 5 figures, and 2 notes.)