Plan for skills development

waggiesAustralian Gifts

This unit covers the skills and knowledge necessary to identify and document current skills and plan future skills development under the guidance of your office manager.

Self-Assessment

Is the process of determining where you've been, where you are, and where you are going by examining your current needs, your personal strengths and your personal weaknesses.

Once you have identified these factors you can begin to build a career roadmap.

Strengths

You will need to know your own strengths and the areas where you need to improve so that you can focus your efforts on learning the appropriate things which will help you meet your goals.

Strengths: What advantages do you have? What do you do well? What relevant resources do you have access

to? What do other people see as your strengths?

Consider this from your own point of view and from the point of view of the people you deal with.

Don't be modest. Be realistic. If you are having any difficulty with this, try writing

down a list of your characteristics. Some of these will hopefully be strengths!

Weaknesses:

What could you improve? What do you do badly? What should you avoid?

Again, consider this from an internal and external basis: Do other people seem to perceive weaknesses that you do not see?

It is best to be realistic now, and face any unpleasant truths as soon as possible.

Opportunities:

Where are the good opportunities facing you? What are the interesting trends you are aware of? Useful opportunities can come from such things as:

Changes in technology and markets on both a broad and narrow scale

Changes in government policy related to your field Changes in social patterns, population profiles, lifestyle changes,

etc. Local Events

 

Opportunities con’t

A useful approach to looking at opportunities is to look at your strengths and ask yourself whether these open up any opportunities.

Alternatively, look at your weaknesses and ask yourself whether you could open up opportunities by eliminating them.

Threats:

What obstacles do you face? Are the required specifications for your

job, products or services changing? Is changing technology threatening your

position? Do you have bad debt or cash-flow

problems?

GoalsWhat are they? The best way to know where you are going in life

is to set goals for your self. Goals are broad, yet specific statements about

desired end achievements. Goals will help you determine priorities and

move constantly towards your destination. Your goals should help map put your actions

and your actions should create results.

A goal that is not expressed specifically is hard to achieve, for exampleYou might say your personal goal is to work in

the ideal job. It would be hard to work towards this goal without expressing it more specifically –

What is your ideal job? Is it in finance? Is it being your own boss? Is it owning your own business?

Short term GoalsYour short term goals are the stepping stones to your long term aspirations. In other words, they enable you to achieve your long term goals.

Undoubtedly, one of your long term goals will be to gain a degree. To do this you'll need to fulfill all of the requirements of your program.

This will include enrolling in specific courses and passing various types of assessment each semester.

In terms of the time management strategies you'll need to adopt while you are studying, it is these short term goals that you'll need to really concentrate on.

Personal Goals

To develop effective time management strategies it's important to take a look at your personal goals or in other words, what it is that you specifically want out of life.

This includes goals that can be achieved in both the long term and the and short term.

Because you have chosen to undertake tertiary study, one of your long term goals will include a focus on learning.

This may encompass some or all of the following: developing new professional skills upgrading the skills you already have learning for your own personal development.

To help you achieve your goals, remember that your goals need to be specific, definite, and that the objectives you identify as being important to achieving you goals should be SMART.

SMART goals and objectives are:

S

M

A

R

T

PECIFIC

EASURABLE

CHIEVABLE

EALISTIC

IME-TARGETED

Personal Skill Development

Having the personal qualities which employers are looking for will help you be successful in obtaining work or creating your own work opportunities.

Personal SWOT Training Needs Analysis

A SWOT analysis may be useful to further clarify your goals.

trengths

eaknesses

pportunities

hreats

S

W

O

T

SWOT Analysis

Understanding –

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities and

Threats

Why use the tool?

SWOT Analysis is a very effective way of identifying your Strengths and Weaknesses, and of examining the Opportunities and Threats you face.

Carrying out an analysis using the SWOT framework helps you to focus your activities into areas where you are strong and where the greatest opportunities lie.

Learning and Working Styles

People tackle learning and working differently.

Knowing your preferred style will help you understand how to work more effectively.

Knowing the preferred styles of your co-workers may make you a more effective team member.

Being able to recognise a learning or working style that you do not use naturally and being able to develop some characteristics of that style may help you become more effective and more efficient.

Your Values

What are values? Values are what you really care about, not only in your personal life, but also in a work situation. Identifying and understanding your values can help you to: determine personal and career goals; make decisions about your career and personal life; select the type of position and working environment that best

matches your own needs and preferences; understand the type of people you most like to be with; use your time and energy wisely to achieve the best result.

Your Interests

What do you like to do? Think about experiences you have enjoyed - school, social, religious, sports, hobbies and work activities.

Interests, your likes, and dislikes, are an important part of career choice, and are related to values and often to skills and abilities.

Most people who enjoy their work have some personal interest in what they are doing.

Your Skills and Abilities

Being aware of your skills, abilities and accomplishments is key to succeeding in today's job market.

Your skills, abilities and accomplishments need to be highlighted if you are to market yourself effectively when you are looking for work.

Skills can be defined as the ability to do something well.

Identifying your skills is an important part of making a realistic career decision.

Very often, we are not aware of the skills we possess because they are so much a part of us.

We also tend to underestimate our skills.

For example, some people assume that because they lack paid work experience they do not have any marketable skills.

All our past experiences - volunteer work, leisure activities, community involvement - need to be examined when identifying our skills.

Job Related Skills

Job-related skills are knowledge-specific and are usually developed through specific education/training programs and experience. Job-related skills: are required for a particular job usually require some training or experience are often used for "screening" applicants

It is important for you to identify which specific job-related skills you already have and which ones you need to learn.

This is an area you will need to revisit when you are establishing your career action plan.

You can progress towards your long-term career goal by upgrading your skills through education and training.

The skills, positive work habits and attitudes developed in entry level jobs, volunteer work and hobbies help you gain the competencies needed to take you one step closer to your "career goals".

Examples of job-related skills include clerical skills, drafting, interior design, psychological testing, and welding.

Personal Management Skills and Personal Qualities These skills and qualities are recognized as becoming

increasingly important. Depending on your source, personal qualities and

personal management skills may be grouped together or listed separately. Here they are grouped together.

These qualities and skills: describe your personality; may include words like honest, trustworthy, hard worker etc; allow you to adapt to new situations; may include words like positive attitude, open to new ideas, self-

confident, well organized etc; are transferable to new situations;

Transferable SkillsTransferable skills are learned and developed through our life experiences through schooling, volunteer work, paid employment, and leisure activities.

These skills can be used in and "transferred" to a variety of situations, such as work, family, or social settings.

Transferable skills: can be used in a variety of jobs;are often called "universal" skills; can transfer from one job to another; may include skill areas such as

communication, leadership, management, etc.

1. STOP the presentation here and complete tasks 1-3 in your Swaggies booklet.

2. Once you have completed the first three tasks, complete the learning styles questionnaire (task 4) and scoring sheet to find out what your learning style is.

3. Continue viewing the presentation to learn more about your learning style.

Your Personal Style

Every individual is unique Learning more about your personal style

can help you understand: where your special strengths areWhat kind of work you may enjoy

4 main learning and working styles

ACTIVISTS

THEORISTS

PRAGMATISTS

REFLECTORS

The combination of where our preference lies on each axis produces four possible learning style types:

Activists

Prefer to get started on a task Figure it out as they go Hands-on Relies on intuition rather than logic Uses other people's analysis and likes practical, experiential approach

doing and feeling preferences, or concrete-active

Theorists

Prefer to research all the background information Prefer to consider all the options before they start Concise Logical approach Ideas and concepts are more important than people Requires good clear explanation rather than practical

opportunity

watching and thinking, or abstract-reflective

Pragmatists

Prefer to see some practical application Benefit from learning or the task before they

start Can solve problems and will use learning to

apply to finding solutions to practical issues Prefers technical tasks Less concerned with people and interpersonal

aspects

thinking and doing, or abstract-active

Reflectors

Need to think about the issues before they feel comfortable starting

Regularly evaluate progress and benefit able to look at things from different perspectives Sensitive prefers to watch rather than do it gathers information and uses imagination to

solve problems

watching and doing, or concrete-reflective

feeling

watching

thinking

doing

ACTIVIST

PRAGMATIST THEORIST

REFLECTOR

Knowing a person's (and your own) learning style enables learning to be orientated according to the preferred method.

That said, everyone responds to and needs the stimulus of all types of learning style - it's a matter of using emphasis that fits best with a person's learning style preferences.

Learning Styles