Understanding Who You are Will Put You in the Right Career Path, Part 4 of 4

Dreamfedjob.com

Download today!

In this final blog aimed at helping your career, we show you how to put all the information you have gathered in our previous three blogs together.  This is the fruit of your labor. Use it and make it work to your advantage.

Identify Your Strengths and Weaknesses

The final step is to take the information you gathered from (1) self assessments, (2) other people (information gathered from observing others and asking others), and (3) your self-exam (results of your situation and self-analyses) and use it to determine your strengths and weaknesses. Instead of taking all of the feedback about your behavior from others as fact, look for recurring themes or patterns of feedback you heard from more than one person. Look at what others identified as your strengths and weaknesses and compare that to what you know about yourself (from the self-exam) and what you learned when looking at the results of your formal assessments.

• Strengths are usually indicated by repeated success or expertise in a particular type of activity. These abilities may come easily to you even though others find them difficult: What did you note as being your favorite things to do, learn about? What do other people turn to you for help with? What do your recent assessments show are your strengths?
• Weaknesses are tasks that you struggle to learn; have difficulty performing; or find boring, draining, or tedious: What did you note as being hard or not fun to do? What did other people suggest as a limitation of yours? Did formal assessments point out any deficiencies? Identify where these descriptions apply and make a list of your strengths and weaknesses. You will need this list to be able to set a clear direction for your self-development efforts.  Good luck!

Dreamfedjob - Turning unemployed into employed.

Understanding Who You are Will Put You in the Right Career Path, Part 3 of 4

Dreamfedjob.com

Download today!

In the previous two blogs, we’d discussed two methods for assessing your strengths and weaknesses: Collecting results from free on-line self-assessment tools, and how to gather feedback from your peers about who you are or how you are perceived by others.

Remember the goal, you are trying to figure out your strengths and weaknesses so that you can plan your career path for effectively and you can write a resume that best portrays your strengths.

Perform a Self-Exam

Examining the way you live your life and the situations you have experienced can reveal things you may want to change or improve. The exercises below will help you take a look at your experiences so that you can better identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Exercise: Do a Situation Analysis

Think of a few situations you’ve experienced over the past two years that give insight into your strengths and weaknesses —maybe a critical decision you’ve had to make, an important task you’ve led or been a part of, or even a significant personal interaction. Use the questions below to help analyze each situation.

1. What was the situation? What was happening, who was there?
2. What was your goal and did you reach it? What were you trying to accomplish, what resources or skills did you have or not have that you needed?
3. What did you say and think? Were you able to find the right words to make your point? What were you thinking at the time? What made you feel good (confident, excited) or bad (confused, worried)?
4. What did you do? How did you act (including your body language)? Why did you choose to act the way you did? How did others react? Did you help or hurt the situation? Did you adjust your actions based on how others were reacting?
5. Why did you act the way you did? What knowledge and skills led you to act the way you did?
6. What could have helped you handle the situation better? How could you have used your strengths to reach a better outcome? Are there any weaknesses that you should make a high priority for your self-development efforts?

Use the questions above to record important information from your experience. After you record the information, look for key factors that influenced how the situation progressed and the overall outcome. These factors may suggest strengths or weaknesses that you will want to work on in your self-development effort. For example, if you froze when you had to give a presentation to a senior manager, maybe you should work on your presentation skills or comfort level working with senior managers. If you lacked knowledge or a skill that you needed to achieve a goal, you may want to work to gain that knowledge or skill. If you felt confident or performed well, you could identify the strengths (knowledge, skills, or abilities) that allowed this and then work to make them even stronger.

By knowing how your actions affected the situation and your thoughts and feelings associated with those actions, you can work to become more self-aware and able to consciously choose the most productive actions. In addition to identifying specific strengths and weaknesses, your situation analysis may suggest broader interests that you would like to pursue or things that you want to avoid in the future. Keep in mind that if you see the same factor at work in multiple situations, it is likely to be a significant strength or weakness that you may want to develop. These are only a few of the ways that a situation analysis may suggest self-development objectives. What do your situations suggest?

• Situation Analysis What was the situation?
• What was your goal and did you reach it?
• What did you say and think?
• What did you do?
• Why did you act the way you did?
• What could have helped you handle the situation better?

Exercise:  Do a Self-Analysis

Complete the statements below as they relate to any part of your life—work or home. Be as specific as you can. Use as many or as few items as you find necessary to identify unique aspects of your strengths and weaknesses.

Self-Analysis Strengths 

1. The skill or ability that I am best at is
2. The personal quality that I rely on most for my success is
3. I am most knowledgeable about
4. The activities I look forward to include
5. I would love to learn more about
6. The accomplishment I am most proud of is
7. Others usually come to me for help on
8. Others think the best job for me would be

Self-Analysis Weaknesses 

1. The skill or ability that is always difficult for me is
2. I don’t know as much as I should about
3. I usually go to others for help on
4. The situation that causes me the most frustration is
5. I am most hesitant when I try to
6. I am most concerned about my
7. Others think I am not very good at
8. I would become a more valued member of my organization if I

Dreamfedjob - Turning unemployed into employed.

Understanding Who You are Will Put You in the Right Career Path, Part 2 of 4

Dreamfedjob.com

Download today!

If you’re reconsidering a career direction, you need to understand your current strengths and weaknesses. This is part of being self-aware.  In our previews blog we discussed how to gather information about you through free on-line tools.  This blog will provide you with some tips on how to gather practical information about you from your peers, friends, and family.

Remember the goal, you are trying to figure out your strengths and weaknesses so that you can plan your career path for effectively and you can write a resume that best portrays your strengths.

Gather Feedback from Others

Hearing or remembering what your peers, subordinates, superiors, family, and friends think about you can help identify your strengths and weaknesses that you haven’t noticed before or have been reluctant to acknowledge. There are two ways to get feedback from others. You can either watch how they act around you to figure out what they think of you or you can ask them directly. Your supervisor has an explicit role to be involved in your development.

Exercise: Watch How Others Act Toward You

Watching how other people act toward you and the decisions they make that affect you will give you an idea of what they think about your skills and expertise. When observing others:

• Make several observations on different occasions. Watching the same person several times will help you see trends that may be a sign of a firmly held opinion of you. Watching someone once isn’t very reliable, as their behavior may have been a result of other issues.
• Consider the circumstances. What outside factors influenced the person’s decisions and actions? For example, if your supervisor selected someone else to perform an important task, was it because you were too busy or unavailable?

Answer the following questions about your supervisor, peers, and subordinates to help reveal their opinions of you.

• Who gets the most challenging assignments in your work group?
• Who does your supervisor go to in an emergency or to get tough problems solved?
• Who does your supervisor praise the most in your work group?
• What kinds of tasks does your supervisor give you versus others?
• How does your supervisor react to your suggestions compared to others’ suggestions?
• Does your supervisor listen to your opinions on certain subjects much more or much less than the opinions of others in your work group? If so, what are those subjects?

Peers and Subordinates

• Do peers and subordinates come to you for help or advice?  On what topics?
• Do they understand you or seem confused or overwhelmed by what you say?
• Do they repeatedly contact you for help, or do your contacts tend to be one-time interactions?
• Does their enthusiasm and interest remain high or increase when they interact with you, or does it seem to diminish?
• What does their body language communicate? Is it relaxed, apprehensive, reserved, etc.?

After you consider these questions, analyze your answers to determine the opinions that the person may have of your strengths and weaknesses.

Asking for Feedback

You can learn a lot about others’ perceptions of you by observing their interactions with you, but your conclusions will only be educated guesses unless you ask them directly. When asking for feedback, try to talk to people who know you in different ways. The goal is to find out:

• What a person actually saw you do and that person’s impressions of your actions
• That person’s impression of how well you did
• How you react in certain situations. For example, “When a subordinate challenges your authority in front of others, you seem to get flustered and be at a loss for words.”

To gain as much insight as possible when getting feedback from people, use the tips below.

Who to Ask

• Ask people who have been able to observe you enough to offer useful information.
• Ask people who have observed you from different perspectives.
• Ask a former or current supervisor, mentor, or teacher who may have greater experience in an area of interest.

Types of Questions to Ask

• Get descriptions of your behaviors and what they thought about your behaviors.
• For feedback about a recurring problem, ask about the situation in which the problem occurs, your actions in the situation, and the usual outcomes that result.
• Ask for suggestions for other ways of handling problem situations.

Things to Remember When Asking Questions

• Be respectful of other people’s time, and prepare questions ahead of time.
• Listen carefully and respectfully.
• Ask for clarification and examples when points are unclear.
• Summarize the points to make sure that you understand the person correctly.
• Thank the feedback providers for their time and assistance. Compare the feedback you receive from different people to look for common themes. These themes will help to identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Dreamfedjob - Turning unemployed into employed.