Skills Self-Assessment
When looking for career opportunities, it is important to know your skills. If you are aware of your strengths and weaknesses, then you know the skills you enjoy using in addition to what you can offer an employer. It is also important to identify the skill areas that you would like to improve upon, both in areas of strengths and weaknesses, throughout your career. This allows you to plan your career, and to make decisions that will help you grow as an employee and as a person.
IDENTIFY YOUR SKILLS
This involves some self-knowledge and a willingness to honestly evaluate your skills, job experience and future capabilities.
Exploring and documenting your own personal and work-based skills can be accomplished through some of the following methods:
Identify a range of roles you've performed, positive or significant experiences you've had, and tasks or jobs you have accomplished.
Write down each role. For each one, ask yourself: 'What are the skills I needed and used that have contributed to the outcome/activity?'
Use a skills checklist (for example, Transferable Skills, Skills with People and Skills with Things, etc.) to identify all the skills you've had to use to accomplish a task/activity.
Note recurring skills patterns and link related skills into larger clusters or descriptions of skill sets. Then, determine which set(s) of skills clusters best defines you.
YOUR SKILLS
Skills can be organized into three categories. Once you have identified your skills, can you identify which category they fit under?
Transferable Skills. These skills are generalizable and functional in that they can be applied to a wide range of employment situations or careers; examples are problem-solving and the ability to work as part of a team.
Self Management Skills. These skills and attitudes enable you to adapt to the environment around you and relate to others. They are often developed early in life but can be cultivated and shaped through experience and practise.
Job Specific Skills. These are skills you need to perform in a certain career, often developed through direct experience or 'on the job training.'