How to identify and use your skills efficiently

1. Identify your skills ¡. Prepare a list of your skills by reviewing your previous work, wether in a paid employment or as a volunteer. ¡¡. Review and add identifiable foundational skills. ¡¡¡. Review the skills typically required of the job you are interested in, ie. Marketable skill. ¡v. Make a list of all those achievements, or similar "good experiences" that you have had in the past 2-5 years `wether work`related or not. Those you feel you did well, enjoyed doing, and feel proud of doing. Add these skills to your list. They are called your motivated skills v. Add all the identified skills, rank and choose the best seven. Now,for each one chosen, write down or tell someone the following: ¡. What you did ¡¡. How you did it ¡¡¡. What happened 2. Know the skills Employers want ¡. How strong are your foundational skills? Take a careful look at them. These are skills all Empoyers need from a prospective employee. ¡¡. When you see discriptions of jobs you want, pay close attention to the skills the employer wants. These are work content skills. ¡¡¡. Learn what peculiar skills are required for the job in which you have an interest.

Type of skills required in the employment market

1.Foundational skills. Foundational skills are the ones every worker needs to exist in a work environment. These include the following: ¡. Basic: These are skills that are essential for all people to survive in life. ¡¡. People: These are skills required to live satisfactorily with others in any society ¡¡¡. Thinking: These are sometimes referred to as common sense. ¡v. Personal qualities: These are unique skills peculiar to a person due to his genetic traits. 2. Marketable skills. These skills can also be referred to "Work Content Statements". They are skills that help an employer in his decision to hire an employee to perform specific tasks. These include the following: ¡. All of the Foundational Skill. ¡¡. The skills listed in job vacancy advertisements. ¡¡¡. Skills unique to a particular company that other companies do not use. 3. Transferable Skills. Transferable skills are those that you can transfer from one occupation to another. For example, an architect can transfer his or her skills to occupations like that of an Engineer or a Builder. Your transferable skills are valuable because they enable you to work in a variety of occupations in different but related industry. 4. Motivated Skills. Motivated skills are those skills that you enjoy using. It is important you know this skills if, you want to work at something you enjoy doing. These are especially important in thinking about your career direction.

What can you offer Employers

Every organization has a purpose, vision and mission, and to attain this purpose they need highly qualified and competent personnel. You must determine what qualities you really have to offer a potential employer after assessing your skills and abilities. Your abilities provide you with the competitive edge you will need to secure a job. YOUR EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION; Your education can provide entry for you into the job market, but you can only stay in the market and maintain a high negotiating power through the assessment, recognition, and utilization of your ability on the work. JOB LOCATION, Geographical consideration could affect your interest in a particular job. It is essential that you assess your probable area of job location.

The principles for assessing your abilities

The following principles are useful in assessing your abilities and interests: 1) Expectation why do you want to do the kind of job you are aiming for? What are your immediate and future expectations from this endeavour? Build your expectations by looking out for relevant information from searching within you and also from your environment. 2) Interest Does your interest correspond with your educational qualification? It is advisable that you do a job that your interests can support, enhance and promote. Interest provides the drive or enthusiasm to perform and achieve a desired objective. 3) Career Objective You must have a career objective; it is only then that a job will be a meaningful tool to achieve this objective. Your job in this sense becomes a means to an end rather than an end in itself. You should set goals ; it is the only measure of direction in your life. Without a career objective, job seeking becomes a routine aspect of existence instead of a tool to achieving a meaningful and purposeful life. What do you want to become in five years from now? Without a determinable, definable and achievable target, you will work anywhere, anyhow and at any price. This is a cheap way to live.

The principles for assessing your abilities

The following principles are useful in assessing your abilities and interests: 1) Expectation why do you want to do the kind of job you are aiming for? What are your immediate and future expectations from this endeavour? Build your expectations by looking out for relevant information from searching within you and also from your environment. 2) Interest Does your interest correspond with your educational qualification? It is advisable that you do a job that your interests can support, enhance and promote. Interest provides the drive or enthusiasm to perform and achieve a desired objective. 3) Career Objective You must have a career objective; it is only then that a job will be a meaningful tool to achieve this objective. Your job in this sense becomes a means to an end rather than an end in itself. You should set goals ; it is the only measure of direction in your life. Without a career objective, job seeking becomes a routine aspect of existence instead of a tool to achieving a meaningful and purposeful life. What do you want to become in five years from now? Without a determinable, definable and achievable target, you will work anywhere, anyhow and at any price. This is a cheap way to live.

Success is not just about learning the right principles to apply.

A weakness can be said to be a lack of strength, power or determination in a particular area. It usually manifest as expressing difficulty in carrying out a task or resistance to change or new idea. A weakness once identified can be improved and changed into strenght. Your knowledge of your strenghts and weaknesses are usually tested in an interview process through questions like "Tell us about yourself". Once you are able to determine your abilities, you can begin to communicate them effectively to prospective employers and use them to your advantage in the market place. Success is not just about learning the right principles to apply, it is also the ability to know the principles that can lead to failure and avoid them. It is amazing to see how many people devote their lives to a field of endeavour or a profession that has little or nothing to do with their abilities. You are gifted with abilities to become whatever you choose to be in life, but you must know them and take advantage of them. The man who wakes up early to this fact will always be ahead of his colleagues.

How much do you know yourself ?

Every successful business must have a competitive advantage which gives the business the edge in an industry. The same can be said for you as you compete in an employer's market. Do you have a unique ability that makes you preferable to other applicants? An appraisal of your abilities and personality can be done through a careful analysis of your strength and weakness. Strengths are qualities, special endowments, skills or aptitude that a person possesses which makes the person operate in a unique way in handling a task. Strengths can also be in the form of technical skills, a natural ability, or knowledge of doing things.This will often be a combination of training, educational qualification, background experience, interests and values.

Your uniqueness is your brand

ASSESS YOUR ABILITIES The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. The next step to a successful job search after defining your vision is an appraisal of your abilities. You need to do this to establish your uniqueness in the job market. What you are able to offer an employer is your uniqueness and your uniqueness is your brand. Too many are mere applicants. You have to move from being a job applicant, which is like a commodity to being a person who has something valuable to offer to prospective employer. This is branding of yourself and it is the secret of winning in a competitive environment. Abilities are the hidden capacity to get the right things done at the right time. It is a mixture of intelligence quotient and adversity quotient. Intelligence Quotient is the demonstration of a technical skill, while Adversity Quotient is staying power; the ability to withstand pressure in the face of adversity. Your abilities are very vital to your productivity and your prductivity in turn determines your economic well being. Ability is a combination of the power to achieve a project and the drive or enthusiasm to see the project to a logical conclusion.

How long do you want to work in an organization?

Most people have been employed their entire lifetime,only to realize that they only have regrettable work experiences. Some even find themselves going through the painful routine of working in an environment they find uninspiring. In both cases, these may be a lack of plan of how long you want to work in a particular place. It might be that you have decided to work in a place as long as you are needed and the conditions of work are favorable, but how long can you hold out?, you would have to quit someday due to age. It is not unusual to transit from being an employee to an employer, although this, if not properly planned, can lead to failure. Thus, it is important that you have a plan of how long you want to work in an organization so that you can work on your persona objective and harmonize this as much as possible with the objectives of the organization while in employment.

Employment

What future plan do you have for yourself? Employment can only guarantee financial security while you are at it, but only a sound plan for the future will ensure financial freedom. It is important that you carefully determine and start to execute whatever plans you have for your future as soon as you can. There are so many people today that are disgruntled with their employers and as a result have diminished in their productivity. This situation is due to the absence of a plan for the future. Getting a job without a clear idea of how the job can impact or enhance your life for the future can sometimes lead to frustration and depression. The ideal thing to do is to ask yourself important questions as you search for and accept employment opportunities.