Best Foot Forward - Week 1: Skills Assessment
Treasa Fitzgibbon and Nicole Meyer co-hosted a 6-week Career Navigation Series in the Fall of 2020. Series attendees identified their strengths, wrote an impactful resume, and learned how to interview. Treasa and Nicole also gave advice for optimizing performance in any position including how to position yourself for promotion, how to advance women in the workplace, and moving into taking action to fully control their careers.
With over 40 years of combined experience in the Finance Industry, both Treasa and Nicole are uniquely placed to help navigate and accelerate a career path.
The most important tool for setting out in any career path is a knowledge of what you bring to the table. For the first session, Nicole and Treasa outlined how to take step back to assess core competencies by asking the following questions:
What were you hired to do? What does your job description say? What are you accountable for, what do you do every day? What did your last performance review say about what you are doing and what you are doing well or not so well? What metrics/goals/targets do you have this year and for what? Where do you feel most passionate? When are you most productive, doing what, exactly? Where do you lose track of time? What keeps your engaged? What do you enjoy doing? What about volunteer work? You may be exhibiting your greatest strengths while volunteering, in which case figure out that skill set/competency and find a role that leverages it/them!
Based on the answers those questions, Nicole and Treasa offered the following examples of skills for the consideration of attendees:
- Soft skills like teamwork (creating/fostering the team). Leadership (assemble/lead a team or thought leadership), listening, storytelling, adaptability, building trust, curiosity, people management/development, communications skills, written skills, interpersonal skills like negotiation, mediation, persuasion; time management, open to learning/coaching, mentoring, analytical thinking
- Process skills: can create/adhere to processes, process improvement (also a business skill), organizing work, thoroughness/excellence, attention to detail
- Customer Skills: high energy, motivate people, customer orientation/focus/empathy
- Business Skills/Hard Skills: subject matter expertise, analytical/analysis, P&L, strategy, implementation/execution, innovation and creativity, thought leadership, sales leadership, problem solving, risk management, data analysis and conclusion. Partnerships, digital skills.
Using the questions and examples of skills listed above, attendees were asked to consider which were their most valuable skills—things they could bring to any job and whether they were currently using them in their careers. Additionally, this assessment can be used to show areas in which you might like to improve in order to apply for a new position or promotion!
Download attached resource file: Best Foot Forward Week 1 - Skills Assessment
Click the url to go to the external content: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15VvFb2tJmrnpQJ_WvSiHQ8MnmTSB1mR2/view
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