Self-assessment

The first vital step for employment is to conduct an assessment of yourself and your skills. The Department of Education, Science and Training have provided a useful worksheet to assist in the job searching self-assessment process: DEST Worksheet 2 - Understand Yourself (*PDF 137 k)

The issues to assess include:

What employers want

  • communication, interpersonal skills
  • analytic skills, problem solving skills
  • organisational and time management skills
  • self-esteem, confidence
  • responsibility, initiative, diligence, flexibility
  • leadership, imagination, motivation
  • conflict resolution and negotiation skills
  • will to learn, self-improvement, direction

What do I want

  • sense of direction
  • two or three things important to you
  • things that if not achieved leave you unfulfilled
  • career goals
  • personal and positive
  • written and specific
  • challenging
  • realistic and measurable
  • what responsibilities, knowledge, skills, type of manager or colleague, type of organisation, location, remuneration?

Values and attitudes

  • where do I place work in my life?
  • what rewards are important to me?
  • what are my commitments?
  • family, friends
  • causes, beliefs, sense of duty, obligations 
  • way of life

Personal attributes and skills

Organising skills

  • time-structuring, management 
  • setting, achieving goals 
  • thorough, attention to detail
  • decision making 
  • helicopter view 
  • manage others, lead 
  • planning 
  • political awareness 
  • contracting 
  • initiating 
  • delegating

Creative skills

  • formulating hypotheses
  • capacity for invention
  • working with analogues, parallels
  • extrapolating
  • capacity for vision
  • lateral thinking
  • using metaphors, analogies
  • suspending judgement
  • building on other ideas
  • being proactive

Cognitive skills

  • numerical competence
  • collecting, selecting data
  • using information
  • observing, recording
  • applying judgement
  • evaluating data, values, issues
  • identifying, solving problems
  • inductive, deductive reasoning
  • synthesising, integrating data
  • formulating, testing hypotheses
  • summarising, assessing
  • diagnosing

Contingency skills

  • responding to change 
  • adapting to new situations 
  • adjusting to individual differences 
  • recognising need for change 
  • coping with the unexpected 
  • improvising 
  • adapting roles 

Significant people

  • who are the important people in my life?
  • what are their views of my strengths? 
  • how will my career relate to them? 

Past achievements

  • recognition from self 
  • recognition from others 
  • certificates, awards 

Social skills

  • encouraging, motivating, criticising 
  • networking 
  • group interaction 
  • working co-operatively 
  • team work 
  • sharing responsibility 
  • willingness to learn 
  • assessing, evaluating others 
  • recognising, allowing for differences 
  • dealing with conflict, apathy 
  • explaining, persuading, empathising

Communication skills

  • technical presentation
  • expressing ideas, opinions
  • presenting to the listen
  • editing
  • oral presentation to groups
  • giving, receiving feedback 
  • active listening 
  • questioning, reflecting, clarifying 
  • non-verbal signs 
  • additional languages

Self-management skills

  • self-awareness 
  • responsibility 
  • operating independently 
  • developing self-esteem 
  • coping, managing stress 
  • identifying self-potential 
  • self-disclosure 
  • personal power, presentation 
  • managing person-profession boundaries 
  • self-evaluation 
  • eliminating prejudices

Physical skills

  • co-ordination 
  • fitness appreciation 
  • spatial awareness 
  • psychosomatic cues 
  • performances inhibitors 
  • diet, exercise

 


Reference: Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Business Council of Australia and Department of Education, Science and Training, 'Employability Skills for the Future', Commonwealth of Australia, 2002.

 *This file is in Portable Document Format (PDF) which requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader. A free copy of Acrobat Reader may be obtained from Adobe. Users who are unable to access information in PDF should contact Rebecca Boddington telephone +61 4531 5308 to obtain this information in an alternative format.