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Friday 10th February 2012

There are lots of different approaches with varying degrees of complexity for helping you to analyse your skills. Majella Wilkins, Return2WorkMums, in the second part of her Summer Homework Series for Women Returners provides a skills analysis exercise Mums can work on over the summer holidays.

The Return2WorkMums Summer Homework Series is a short series of time efficient exercises that busy Mums can use in pockets of spare time over the summer holidays.

They are not as detailed as those you might complete with one of our professional career mentors where a number of different techniques as well as personality profiling might be used. They are, however, designed to prompt your thinking to help you explore and understand a little more clearly your strengths and preferences.  This in turn will help to provide clarity for your job searching, aid your communication with recruiters and employers as well as helping you to feel positive about yourself and boost confidence.

Defining your skills & value to an employer

This week’s exercise is about Defining Your Skills and Value to an Employer but rather than sit at length pondering the answers, take 15 – 20 minutes a day over a week to complete the exercise.

Step 1 is to develop your career story
Last week’s exercise was about capturing all the detail around your personal career story to arrive at the position you are today. Now start by exploring and identifying those periods you were:

  1. Happiest
  2. Most successful
  3. Most confident
  4. In the driving seat making positive things happens in your working life

Review you career story and highlight:
  1. What were the circumstances around your positive memories?
  2. Did you have to overcome obstacles?
  3. Did you have to learn a new skill?
  4. Which of your attributes really contributed to your happiness, success, confidence and feeling in charge?

Step 2 Start to group your skills into positive packages
From your career story you should now have a list of skills that you have consistently and regularly called upon. Employers are interested in skills like these with demonstrable proof of your expertise. It is not convincing just to say “I’m a good communicator” – you need to provide more detail of when and how you’ve used this skill with the resulting positive outcome.

Skills can be organised into the following groups which are quite typical of what employers are looking for when recruiting. Now start to group your career story skills with examples:

  1. Communicating & Influencing
  2. Listening & coaching
  3. Managing & motivating people
  4. Planning & organising
  5. Managing your time and priorities
  6. Managing finances
  7. Using IT
  8. Solving Problems
  9. Being creative
  10. Coping in a crisis
  11. Learning new skills
  12. Adapting to change

My experience of women returners is they typically discount their career break experience but this is also relevant if presented properly. To help with your career break skills assessment I’ve included some prompts for each of the skill groups.  Remember, you are not meant to be an expert in all 12 areas but will have a core few you have consistently relied on and used in order to be successful throughout your career and career break.

1. Communicating & Influencing
Have you faced new social situations and needed to make acquaintances quickly?
Do you run any groups that require you to stand up and present to an audience?

2. Listening & coaching
Have you had to listen and support someone through a difficult situation?
Are you part of any groups where you support others?

3. Managing & motivating people
Do you run any committees or local groups?
Have you had to manage people working on a project for example in your home or local charity?

4. Planning & organising
What events have you organised for your local school, community, family or friends?
Have you completed any household projects which required good project management?

5. Managing your time and priorities
What approach have you taken to manage your household duties along with the differing needs of your family?
Are you good at meeting deadlines or tend to apologise for being late?

6. Managing finances
Have you had to manage the budget for a significant event such as a large party?
Have you had to source suppliers and quotes for a project and then manage the budget?

7. Using IT
How much do you use the computer at home and for what kind of tasks?
Have you taken any new courses?

8. Solving Problems
How do you handle situations when they don’t go to plan, eg a house renovation project, holiday disasters, a sick child?

9. Being creative
Local school or charity needs to raise funds are you good at coming up with some new ideas?
Do you help out at local carnival, school play with costumes, scenery etc?
Do you have ideas of your own or tend to be more creative when working with others?

10. Coping in a crisis
How do you respond to upsetting or challenging situations, eg your child is being bullied and refuses to go to school?
Maybe your partner is facing redundancy – what do you in a situation like this?

11. Learning new skills
Do you like the opportunity to learn new skills? Eg, have you had to refresh or learn new skills to support your children?
Have you learnt new internet skills such as becoming savvy about social media?

12. Adapting to change
How do you cope with change – does it scare or excite you?
How did you transition to being a Mum and leaving your former professional role?
Have you moved house into a completely new area or country?

Remember, these are your working notes and don’t need to be word perfect. You do, however, need to be honest and searching of yourself to build an accurate profile of who you are, what you’re good at and why you’re a great candidate for the job.
Next week’s exercise from Return2WorkMums is about how you take these skills and package them up into a personal statement about you.


Article written by Majella Wilkins, founder of Return2WorkMums - a new online community for women to connect with experts for support, inspiration and knowhow about returning to work and managing their ongoing working life. Return2WorkMums keeping you informed and connected for a confident return to work.