Your Skills

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How to Recognise, Analyse and Describe Your Own Skills

So, we understand from Step 1 that employers are looking for evidence of your skills, qualifications and knowledge, interest and commitment (to the career area and to them as an organisation). You may have come across the term ‘key skills’, also known as ’core’ or ‘transferable’ skills. Perhaps you are wondering what they are, whether you possess any and how to evidence them on paper. Read on . . .

We all possess skills, knowledge and personal qualities.

• Skills - things we can do/have developed over time
• Knowledge - things we know, have been taught, or learned independently
• Personal qualities - our personality – i.e. sociable/reserved;
• adventurous/cautious; imaginative/factual.

To operate successfully in all aspects of our lives, most of us have had to develop skills such as organising and managing our time, using Information technology, problem-solving and decision-making, to name but a few.

The notion of ‘key skills’ is not a new one as it has been around in education and employment for over 20 years now. Education and training seek to develop these skills in their students or trainees, whilst employers often have a list of them in their recruitment literature, sometimes divided into ‘essential’ and ‘desirable’ skills. So what are they? Graduate and other employers differ slightly in their ‘lists’ but here is a summary:

Key Skills

• Communication - listening, discussing, writing, making presentations, customer-care skills
• Self-management - time-management, organising, prioritising, identifying your own goals, coping with stress and pressure
• Inter-personal skills - team-working, co-operating, leadership potential, persuading and influencing, negotiating, coaching, supervising
• Adaptability and flexibility - able and willing to change, adapt to different work environments, tasks, colleagues, geographically mobile, flexible in attitude
• Commitment and motivation - Positive, interested, innovative, enthusiastic, able to take initiative
• Problem-solving - researching and sifting information, analysing problems, proposing strategies, thinking creatively, critically evaluating, reaching decisions
• Commercial/business awareness - understanding the profit motive, customer focus, taking calculated risks
• Information technology - familiarity with basic software packages, willingness to learn new ones

Now you understand what key skills are, your next tasks are to:

• Identify your own
• Provide concrete examples
• Describe these on paper (job applications/CVs)

The first time you do this, it may well take you 1-2 days, but once you’ve done it, you can use the same information over and over again. Of course you will update your examples and your portfolio of skills as you progress through your career. This skills self-analysis will form a major part of the content of your CV or application form.

But first . . .

Identify Your Own

Where to find them? From anywhere: academic life, work (paid or voluntary), leisure and social life, home and personal life.

Provide Concrete Examples

This means that once you have identified the skills you possess, you must prove it by providing evidence i.e. a real example, preferably from within the last 3-4 years of your life. An example might be:

Question: Give three examples of team-working experiences:

Response Examples:

Describe Them on Paper

Clearly and concisely (see above example).

It’s easier on application forms where the questions are in boxes, each box asking for an example pertaining to a particular skill i.e. ‘Give two examples of your leadership skills’. However, some application forms are ‘essay style’ where you are given an A4 blank side of paper to summarise your skills. CVs, of course, are a different matter, you are wholly responsible for the design, layout, order and content and will need to decide just where and how to present your skills. See Steps 3 and 4 of this section.

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