Check Your Skills

When applying for a job the majority of skills fall into four categories, these are as follows:

1. Self-reliance skills

   • Self-management
   • Self-awareness
   • Proactivity
   • Willingness to learn
   • Self-promotion
   • Networking
   • Planning action

2. People Skills

   • Team working
   • Interpersonal skills
   • Oral communication
   • Leadership
   • Customer orientation
   • Foreign language

3. General Skills

   • Problem-solving
   • Flexibility
   • Business acumen
   • IT/Computer literacy
   • Numeracy
   • Commitment

4. Specialist Skills

   • Occupational skills
   • Technical skills
   • Understanding commercial goals
   • Company-related expertise
   • Professional expertise
   • Strategic planning skills

When focusing on these areas it is important that you use the most relevant examples of these skills when applying for a job. It is also crucial that you review your skills regularly and recognise how ‘portable’ they are so that you can start thinking along the lines of ‘I can do’ rather than simply ‘I do’ when asked to focus on your skill set.

So How Employable are You?

In other words, how does your present portfolio of skills measure up against the above profile?

To check this you need to:

• Map Out your skills by listing your experiences and achievements.
• Collect evidence that proves you have these skills.
• Review your skills; assess which are strongest, which you enjoy using most and which you need to develop.
• When assessing your existing skills, take care not to undersell yourself.

Many of us fail to realise what skills we posses and just take our abilities for granted.

This one-dimensional approach means we often focus only on skills and experience gained from traditional full-time paid work.

To avoid this, you should map out a detailed profile of all the areas of your life.

Look at all dimensions, full-time work, part-time work, voluntary work, home work, community work.

Size Yourself Up

The following exercise encourages you to think about your key skills and attributes.

It will boost your awareness of your strengths and areas for development so you can:

• Improve your chances of achieving your ideal job
• Promote yourself more effectively
• Assess ways in increasing your employability

Mapping Out Your Skills

1. List the positive experiences and achievements in your career to date. If you are already in work this is not too difficult, but think too about experiences in part-time work, voluntary work and work undertaken for social purposes, e.g. for clubs, community groups or similar organisations.
2. Look at the list of words in the skills portfolio below and recognise skills and attributes that have resulted from the initial list you have created.
3. Put yourself in the shoes of three people in turn – friends/family, tutors/lecturers, and people you have worked for, people you work with, or other work-related contacts how would their views of you differ?
4. Make sure you write these skills down and ensure they appear on your CV and at interview.

Collecting The Evidence

1. Take a reality check. Make sure you have enough evidence for each skill area. Try to create a list of positive examples that demonstrate your level of competence, e.g. raised £10,000 fundraising for RAG, represented the student body on union council, or participate in delivering proactive campaigns to the student body.
2. Refine your list if you cannot provide enough physical or verbal evidence.
3. Keep a record of all your positive feedback and achievements and make sure it remains up to date.

Reviewing Your Skills

1. Look at the resulting list mentioned above and think about which of these skills you would like to use a great deal more of in the future – these are your core portfolio of skills, i.e. the things you’re good at and enjoy.
2. Revisit the skill you either haven’t highlighted or do not have enough evidence of. Highlight those you feel are crucial to maintaining your employability in the short and medium term. These are your areas for future development.
3. Think about whether you have the right balance of self-reliance, people, generalist and specialist skills to stay employable.
4. Ensure your key skills are emphasised on your CV and in interviews.

You Have More Than You Think

You’ll be amazed at how many skills you posses once you start to look at yourself in a wider perspective. That means taking into account the kind of things you get involved in, in and away from your normal academic lifestyle.

Think about all the aspects of your life including your family, social life and other non-work-related activities and you’ll be surprised how many skills you really have.

The Universities Career Development centre can assist you with producing or updating your CV. Check out their website for information on this and much much more, at http://www.derby.ac.uk/careers/applying-for-jobs/cvs Further Education students also have support with applications, CVs and interviews from Connexions.