The 7th of our 10 tips for anyone looking to progress their career. A two-minute read about making sure you have the evidence to back up your skill set might be all the inspiration you need!
Expanding your Skill Set – Tip 7 of 10
The job skills shortage isn’t going anywhere so here is this week’s tip that you can take to improve the probability of your career success.
Tip 7 of 10: Make sure you have the evidence to back up your skill set.
Many people use the phrase proven track record … but don’t prove it. So, if you want to be credible you must have examples, at least three and ideally four, that you can base your claim against. If you have less than three, there is a chance you will run out of examples to showcase your value and end up trying to justify why they should hire you, rather than reassure them that they made the right decision to bring you in to talk to you. A subtle but important difference.
How do find examples; simply look at your job description and look at the responsibilities. For each responsibility ask yourself, did I deliver on that? If the answer is yes, then it is an example that you can use to demonstrate your credibility. Struggling to find more than two? Ask yourself the following questions?
- Can I think of a situation that involved a responsibility that I enjoyed?
- Can I think of a second situation that involved a responsibility that I found interesting?
- Can I think of a third situation that involved a responsibility that I found challenging?
- Can I think of a fourth situation that involved a responsibility that went better than I expected?
- Can I think of a fifth situation that involved a responsibility that looking back, could have gone better?
Even if you can’t get a separate example for each, by running through these questions, if you truly had that responsibility in your role, you should be able to identify at least three.
So, closing the skills gap divide might not be as daunting as you first thought and may not require anything more than a fresh perspective and way of looking at it. It sounds simple and it is, it’s just not always easy, especially when trying to do it alone.
For practical advice on how to make the change without being overwhelmed contact us to discuss how we can help.