Identifying Assets to Aid Career Development

img

Nicky Spijkerman is a career adviser at UQ Careers and Graduate Employment Unit, The University of Queensland

 

We all contribute to this world with our own unique set of assets — talents, skills, personality, values and passions. One of the most important things you can do in life is to identify those assets and make them benefit you.

 

Education allows you to build further in-depth knowledge and skills, while your life and work experiences contribute to further developing those assets. These experiences allow you to apply your accumulated knowledge and skills in real-life situations and to further learn to understand the implications and consequences of your actions.

 

Your natural skills — or talents — are embedded in your subconscious mind. Talents are different from general skills. General skills can be learnt through repetition or by following instructions; talents are skills that come naturally to you. These are the skills that you naturally do well and that require hardly any effort or energy. People often don’t recognise their own talent because they assume that everyone has those skills and can’t understand why other people just can’t do tasks that seem so simple to them! On the plus side, while you may not be able to readily identify your talents, people in your environment such as friends, family or colleagues can usually point them out quite easily.

 

Your passions are those topics and areas in life that make you lose track of time. You want to learn more about them and you have a special antenna for them wherever you are. You always seem to gravitate to these topics — even when you don’t have time or patience to do other things. Passions give you energy. You become enthusiastic, craving to learn more about them and become involved. And because you are so enthusiastic, involved and inclined to learn about these passions, you feel more confident talking about them.

 

Your personality and values often determine the work style and environment you prefer. Some people prefer to work independently, while others would rather work in teams. Some need a dynamic work environment to keep them on their toes, but for others it’s all about preparing their work in advance before delivering the product.

 

Throughout life, we also develop a set of values: the things that we personally find important. These values are dynamic and may change throughout life but they are still the very essence of you — what you are drawn to, what you seek and what you live for. These values are what makes you tick in work and in life. They determine how you like to contribute to society.

 

One of the tools that I use to get people to reflect on their assets is the Timeline Exercise. The timeline reflects their education, work experience, hobbies and extracurricular activities, major achievements and decisions that they have made so far. Once they have drawn their timeline, I assist them to start recognising certain patterns that indicate their talents, passions, values and preferences for work style and work environment.

 

In our lives we have unconsciously already made use of our skills and talents. Others might have recognised them and assigned us to certain tasks or roles. An example might be if you work in a supermarket and are asked to supervise other workers. Senior staff would only have assigned you to this task you if they had already recognised your leadership skills and were confident that you would do a good job.

 

Moreover, throughout life you gravitate in work, education and hobbies towards areas and topics that interest you. If you like playing music, you are probably involved in some musical activities. Depending on your personality you might do this individually or in a group.

 

Values influence the choices that you make, and completing the Timeline Exercise can be very helpful to you because it will reflect whether those choices have been made based on your own values or on those of others — such as parents, your peer group, the wider society or, indeed, for any other practical reasons.

 

Uncovering your assets helps you to present a positive image not only to employers and people around you, but most importantly to yourself. Once you have identified your natural talents, passions, skills, personality and values you can use them to choose your path of study, career, hobbies and extracurricular activities, and take advantage of your skills and talents.

 

Moreover, being aware of your unique footprint, how you can and want to contribute to society and what makes you stand out from the crowd enables you to start exploring (new) opportunities and directions.

 

By Nicky Spijkerman