Discover the Fulfilling Career that Lies Hidden in Your Skill Set
If you create a list of accomplishments, both big and small, you’ll be in a position to determine the kinds of skills you possess that you enjoy using. It’s not just about what you are skilled at, it’s about using the skills that you’re also passionate about. This will ultimately help you choose a career that you’ll look forward to doing each and every day.
Create Your List of Skills
For each accomplishment you listed, jot down the all the different skills you used to accomplish the task. There are 3 categories of skills to consider:
Functional Skills. These are ones that are relevant to your interaction with people, data, or things. Think of words like assembled, designed, installed, or organized.
Personality Skills. These are associated with patterns of behaviour that, while learnable, are usually more useful if they come naturally. Think of words like adaptable, dependable, persistent, or self-starter.
Knowledge Skills. These are ones that are learned and applied to specific situations. Think of words like accounting, welding, scuba diving, computer programming.
Determining Your Core Skills by Priority
Once you’ve completely listed the skills used in each of your accomplishments, add up the number of times you used each skill. The ones that appear most often are your core skills. The relative number of times they appear will provide insight into their priority. These numbers are not your true prioritization levels but it’s a good starting point. You may decide that though you used a particular skill most often, it’s not the skill you like to use most. Now list your top 5 functional and personality skills based on your satisfaction using that skill.
Applying Your Prioritized Core Skills
This final list of skills makes your life, your goals and your accomplishments much easier to understand. These are the skills you want to use again and again in your careers and life to be successful. When you start looking at potential careers, look for ones that would most involve using your prioritized core skills the most. People who do this are mostly likely to answer “Great, I get to go and play today.”
Continue Your Self-Discovery
Check out The Right Mountain’s business page on Facebook. You’ll find articles, videos, or you can ask any questions you might have about exploring your passions and finding the right career for you.