The 5th of our 10 tips for anyone looking to progress their career. A two-minute read about mapping your skills might be all the inspiration you need!
Expanding your Skill Set – Tip 5 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 5 of 10: Map your skill profile against what the market is looking for.
- Conduct a survey of 4 to 5 adverts for the type of role that you are looking for, in the sectors that you would want to work in.
- Look at the person/candidate specification, compile a frequency tally chart of the skills and attributes that appear.
- Organise the data so that you know what the top 5 – 6 skills being looked for are.
- Evaluate your competence against each using the following scoring system:
4 – Used a lot
3 – Regularly used
2 – Occasionally used
1 – Rarely used
If your scoring is high (a score of 3 or 4) and you have at least 3 examples that you can draw on that provide the evidence to back up that score, then potentially you might be seen as a credible candidate.
If the scores are low, then either you are pitching at the wrong level or for the wrong type of role. Therefore, the likelihood of securing it would decrease significantly as you would probably not get through an automated tracking system and recruiters/head-hunters would not really be interested in talking with you, leaving only the unadvertised route to market open to you.
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.