What are you good at?

Think about:

• technical skills associated with your degree subject, such as using specialist equipment or software;
• generic or transferable work skills, such as cash handling, working under pressure, meeting targets, supervising others, report writing;
• soft skills, such as working in a team, communication, time management, showing initiative.

What are you interested in?

This question covers the kind of physical and social setting you want to work in (office-based, a variety of locations, outdoors, production, laboratory, in a team or alone) as well as the subject matter – would you like to use your degree subject in your job? Remember that around half of graduate jobs don’t specify a particular subject, so, while it’s not necessary for you to use your subject, it might be something you would like to do.

What do you believe in and how does this fit with your career plan?

At first sight this is less straightforward than the other two questions. To help you, think about which of the following is something you care about:

• protecting the environment;
• improving the life chances of people who are disadvantaged;
• contributing to the economy through provision of goods or services;
• being creative, with words or materials;
• sharing, creating or discovering knowledge;
• achieving a high standard of living.

These are examples of values, or beliefs that guide the way we live our lives. Some people live out their values outside their working life, for example a high-flying business executive whose work role is to contribute to the economy and who gives time and money to a local charity for the homeless; others look for a working life that is consistent with their values, for example an international development worker. Thinking about what matters to you is another way to identify suitable job opportunities.

Make a note of your answers to our three questions.

Think about these three questions:

• What are you good at?
• What are you interested in?
• What do you believe in and how does this fit with your career plan?

Why does it matter?

Firstly, knowing yourself better helps you to get started if you have no particular preferences about your future career. If you can think and learn about what you are good at, what you are interested in, and what you believe in, you will begin to identify job choices. You will also be able to eliminate jobs from your career plan and this is just as useful, as it helps you to narrow down the possibilities. It also helps you to identify the underlying factors in the jobs you are both choosing and eliminating, which in turn helps you to broaden your range of choices. As you learn more about the detail of job opportunities you will be able to fit this knowledge with what you know about yourself. Remember to refer back to Part 1 of this book to revisit the kinds of opportunities open to you as a graduate.

Secondly, career success and satisfaction are more likely to be achieved if there is a good match with what you are good at, what you are interested in, and what you believe in and believe to be important. Have a look at this brilliant example to see what we mean.

Now read this example again and look for evidence of Joanne’s skills, interests and values in her story. All three are critical to her success in, and enjoyment of, her brilliant graduate career.

We noticed her references to:

• working to deadlines;
• self-organisation;
• self-discipline;
• increased independence;
• satisfaction at seeing young people with low aspirations grow in confidence and broaden their outlook;
• her interest in using her degree subject.

Each of us is unique

Although we referred to Joanne’s achieving a good match between her own skills, interests and values and the job she has chosen, this doesn’t mean that we are trying to put square pegs in round holes. Two students on the same course, getting the same grades, doing the same kind of part-time work, will each make their own unique and valid sense of their experience – which in turn will impact on their career planning. A skilled careers adviser will help you to ‘make meaning’ of your own particular experiences and ambitions. So, in addition to considering your skills, interests and values and how these might be fulfilled in particular job roles, you might also think about key turning points in your life so far, how people or events have influenced you, and the extent to which you take a logical, rational approach or an intuitive approach to planning your future. These are all factors that contribute to your uniqueness.

How reflection works

Watch any post-match discussion of a big football game and you will see the experts taking the game apart, reviewing the successes as well as the weak points of the game and analysing the performance of every player in great detail. If you are a football fan, you might well have evaluated the game in the same way. If not, you might be amazed at the perception of the experts, at the extent to which they notice and interpret what’s going on in the game. We can be sure that the manager, coach and players use the same process of review soon after the match, in order to make improvements for next time. What has this got to do with career planning?

• Firstly, the experts and professionals take time to reflect.
• Secondly, they know what they are looking for and can describe what they see.
• Thirdly, they know what this means for future performance.

So let’s apply this to something you might do, say working in a group of other students to complete a project. You get an average mark for the work. Which of the following do you do?

1. Say, ‘Great, that’s a pass’, and think no more about it.
2. Take time to read your feedback, talk to your tutor, think about what went well and why, what went badly and why, what your own role was in the group, how you could behave differently next time to get a better result, and then make a note somewhere to remind you.

Option 2 might sound like a lot of trouble – but the gain is that you will have an insight into how you work as a member of a team (a classic area for you to cover in an application and for employers to explore at interview) and a sense of how to become more skilled. You will also find that, if you get into this way of thinking, it will become part of your behaviour and much less of an effort. Your university may have an electronic framework, or e-portfolio, to help you to keep your record. Otherwise, just devise a simple template that you can update as significant events occur.

Try this yourself

Now try this one for yourself, this time focusing on your communication skills. Take an example – giving a presentation to your seminar group or handling a difficult customer in the workplace – and answer the following questions.

1. What happened? (Describe the setting and the activity/incident.)
2. What went well? Why? How do you know?
3. What went less well? Why? How do you know?
4. What would you do differently next time? What do you need to help you to do this?

Notice that there is a new question here – how do you know? The answers to this question are the evidence you need to show that you have the skill in question. Employers will seek evidence – it’s not enough to say, ‘I’m really good at communicating with people.’

Where’s the evidence?

Let’s go back to the example of giving a presentation. Evidence can come from:

• your own self-reflection (‘although I covered the ground, I was running out of time and I felt as if I rushed the last part’);
• the response of the audience (they looked interested/stayed awake/asked questions/told me afterwards they understood it); and
• feedback from your tutor (informal comments, written feedback, an actual grade or mark).

Gathering this evidence and being willing to listen to feedback will make a real difference to what you do next time – in other words, it will improve your performance.

So go back to those four steps – what happened, what went well, what went less well, what will you do differently next time and try to apply them. You will learn more about your own skills, and you will get better. Best of all you will develop a skill employers really value, because you will be a person who learns from experience and who actively seeks opportunities for learning.

	Most graduates now are expected to do regular evaluations of where they are at and where they are going . . . developing the individual to the point where they can take control of their life, their learning and their career.
	Carl Gilleard, Chief Executive, Association of Graduate Recruiters

Talk to people

If your university offers one-to-one careers consultations, you really don’t need to know what you want to do before you book your slot! Careers advisers use skilful questioning to guide you through these three areas as a way to help you to develop a career plan. It’s surprising how often ‘I don’t know what I want to do’ really means ‘I’ve got a few ideas but I’m not sure . . .’

If you can’t get access to one-to-one consultations with a careers adviser, talk to your personal tutor, or a tutor you get on with who knows you well. Just thinking aloud with a good listener can move you forward. Also, try other people you know who might have some time – friends, family, someone you know through a part-time job or work experience. Get them to help you to answer our three questions. If they are in a position to give you feedback, ask them, so that you get a better insight into your skills.

Use psychometric tests

In Chapter 12 of this book we will be looking at how tests and questionnaires are used by employers during selection. In this chapter we will tell you how to use them to learn more about yourself. Tests used in career planning or selection are often referred to as ‘psychometric’ tests. This simply means tests that ‘measure the mind’. We will look more at the detail of psychometric tests in Chapter 12 and have a look at our companion book, Brilliant Passing Psychometric Tests (Mulvey, 2015); for now, here are some quick definitions.

Psychometric test – a set of questions that measure an aspect of mental performance or behaviour. The word psychometric means measuring the mind.

Aptitude test – a measure of a particular aptitude or ability consisting of questions with right and wrong answers. Scores are compared with others to assess performance.

Personality test – a set of questions designed to explore and describe aspects of personality, or what kind of person we are. There are no right or wrong answers, though when employers use a personality test they may be looking for certain characteristics.

You can use aptitude tests to check out your ability with logic, numbers and words. They may not tell you anything you don’t already know – but you might be surprised.

Personality tests, on the other hand, can give you real insight into your characteristics and preferences. They are particularly useful because they contain statements – often multiple choice – that act as prompts. So instead of asking yourself, ‘How do I contribute to a team?’, a personality test will give you a set of situations to choose from, which, taken together, will indicate how you usually behave. Personality tests and questionnaires are not magic – they only reflect back to you information you have put in, but in a systematic and logical way.

‘Career Planner’ is a readily accessible and career-specific questionnaire, which can be found on the Graduate Prospects website. Questions are in four sections: first steps; skills; motivation; and desires. Complete ‘first steps’ and you will see a list of matched occupations; as you complete each further section the list is refined and edited, and there are links to help you to explore the best matches in more detail.

Find out more

Your university may offer sessions or online materials on how to develop your employability skills. Sometimes these sessions form part of your subject timetable; in other cases they are an optional extra. See what you can find out about what’s on offer where you are. Check your university careers service website or Facebook page regularly, or follow them on Twitter. An Internet search for employability skills will also bring up useful questionnaires and checklists.

In addition to the skills needed for a particular job, employers of graduates look for competence in a range of employability skills, so look for opportunities to learn about, develop and show evidence of these skills.

Try this exercise

Looking at your own skills, interests and values will help you to look at jobs in a new way. Think about your last part-time or vacation job – you might have taken it ‘because it was there’, or because you always work there in the vacation, or because your friend works there. For a few moments, think about this job and answer the following questions:

• What skills did you need, or use?
• In doing the job, what did it help to be interested in?
• What values did the organisation hold, either in a mission statement or in everyday working practice?

Now answer these questions for a graduate job you might think about doing:

• What skills will you need?
• What will it help to be interested in?
• What values are likely to be important?

You can find information about skills and interests in the entry requirements or person specification for the job. Information about values is harder to pin down. Though a company website will often quote the organisation’s values, you need to think about the detail of a particular job to work out what the associated values might be.

• Knowing more about yourself, especially your skills, interests and values, will help with your career planning and jobsearch.
• Use the skill of reflection to develop your self-awareness and build your evidence.
• Employability skills are important in all jobs – work on yours.
• Get an in-depth insight into job opportunities by using the ‘skills, interests and values’ headings.