Your skills and competence areas- how to identify and present them

Psychologist, Career Coach Seija LeppänenAalto University Learning Services, Student Servicesseija.leppanen@aalto.fi

Modern working life

Mark Savickas: Life Designing in 21st century,IAEVG conference 27.9.2013

Life and Career Design

• Work as projects: Only the result of the work is visible.The result of the work doesn’t define a person’s identityuntil retirement.

• A need to present your competence areas and skills

• A need to build an identity based on values and skills:what are you passionate about? What do you want to begood at? How can you make money with what is excitingfor you and important for your community?

The Life Designing at the XXIesiecle / Mark Savickas

Planned Happenstance

Unpredictable social factors, chance events and environmental factors areimportant influences on peoples’ lives.

Beneficial qualities that will help you to turn serendipity into opportunity:• curiosity to explore learning opportunities: “what next?”• persistence to deal with obstacles• flexibility to address a variety of circumstances and events• optimism to maximise benefits from unplanned eventsHelpful factors in career management:• the commitment to ongoing learning and skill development• ongoing self-assessment & feedback from others• effective networking• achieving work-life balance• financial planning to incorporate periods of unemployment.

John Krumboltz: The HappenstanceLearning Theory

Employability

is a combination of an individual’s aptitude, knowledge and skillsto find a job, stay employed and develop a career.

Employability consists of:• Personal attributes: self-beliefs of efficacy, willingness to develop,

metacognition (ability to reflect and regulate one’s own learning andactivities), marketing skills, personal network

• Skills: sectorwise knowledge and skills, information gathering, CV,portfolio, experiences outside university education, ability to employoneself

• External factors: degree, job market, area, support, luck!

Visa Tuominen’s dissertation”Maistereiden työllistyvyys 2013”

The sources of identity – what is theidentity based on?• A profession, a vocation founded upon specialized

educational training• A portfolio career – a combination of paid labour and

assignments (writing, teaching, consulting etc.)• Leaps from a sector, function or task to another (project

planner, coordinator, specialist, teamleader etc.)• It’s a living – the heart and the mission of life is

somewhere else• Role in the society, philosophy, relation to family, age

You

Skills =whatcan you do

Values andmotivation =

what willyou do

Attitude=how wellwill you do

Personality= the style

ofapproaching

tasks

Home assignments: group discussions

Group 1 Success and achievements:Introduce your achievements to the group.The group: what personal strengths can you judge by listening the achievements?

Group 2 Your personal strengths:Introduce your strengths, passion and resources to the group.The group: ask further questions and produce as much new ideas for the person’swork role as you can.

Group 3 Career Construction worksheet:Introduce your favourite stage to the group. What is the personal meaning of whatyou found? How could you advance your story to a best possible new chapter?The group: how could you help the person? New ideas? Something you could dotogether?

How to productise what you have to offer

• An employer wants to understand what you have tooffer for this company.

• With your skills profile you want to give reasons forthe employer to hire you — you want to showcaseyour education and work experience by showingexamples and evidence of your work, skills,accomplishments, capability, motivation andresponsibility.

• Create your own way to evaluate and collect yourlearning results as a skills profile.

The basics of a skills profile• Career Summary and Goals• Professional Philosophy/Mission Statement• Traditional Resume• Skills, Abilities and Marketable Qualities• List of Accomplishments• Samples of Your Work• Research, Publications, Reports• Testimonials and Letters of Recommendations• Awards and Honors• Conference and Workshops• Transcripts, Degrees, Licenses, and Certifications• Professional Development Activities• Military records• References List

http://www.quintcareers.com/job-search-portfolio/

Competence and skills

Hat: Generic competence, transferable skills, e.g:Language and cultural skills, technology, communication and negotiating skills,ability to find positive results, share ideas, ability to value others’ skills and use

them, business sense, understanding the complexity of working life etc.

Column:Expertise and

knowledge of yourown special field

Working life skills that Aalto University graduates regardedimportant in their work roles five years after graduating

Negotiating skillsTeamwork and social skillsPresentation skillsCommunication skills and language skillsLeadership skillsTeaching and counseling skillsProject management skills: organizing, coordinating, communicatingProblem solvingAnalytical systematical thinkingKnowledge of business basicsKnowledge of legistlationBudgetary planningTheoretical knowledge of one’s own study field

Aalto Career Services: Uraseurantaraportti 2007- 2012. Viisi vuotta valmistumisesta.

Career Planning Workbook in Aalto CareerWebby Aalto University Career Counselling

SKILLS MAP,example

Excercise: Career competence and skills map

Reflect and document all your learning experiences- in the University- Possible previous degrees- Job experiences- Voluntary work- Positions of trust- Hobbies…

Year by year: what did you do last year… what about2014… and 2013 … and 2012 …

Plans for the future

• A good CV / career portfolio• Understand your skills and strengths compared to others• Get to know people• Know your options: the trends and needs of working life• Understand how companies work when they need to

recruit.• Make decisions: what next!

More information in Aalto CareerWeb

https://into.aalto.fi/display/encareerweb/Home

• Career and Employment Survey for Doctoral Graduates of 2008-2009(in “Placement of Aalto graduates”)

• Tohtorien uraseurantaraportti vuosina 2010-2011 valmistuneet(in “Aallosta valmistuneiden sijoittuminen työelämään”)

• Planning your career & Job hunting guide• Career Planning Workbook (Into/ Services/ Aalto CareerWeb/ Planning your career)

• Partner companies

How to construct a career

Modern working life and modern career design

Modern working life consists of projects: you collect a group of people who are passionate of thesame things and after a couple of years people will scatter to new projects. Only the result of thework is to be seen, not how it is done, who did which part of the result with what kind of skills andteam spirit.

The dramatic change of working life and job market has happened during the last few decades. Inthe 70’s, according to Mark Savickas, one of the most influential figures in career theory, themetaphor of working life could be described as an assembly line: a person was part of the stablesystem, job contracts were long and the employer might have provided the employees with healthcare, hobbies and friends. Work was transparent, you could see who was talking to whom, whoknew whom, who was quick and who was slow.

In the 80s the metaphor of working life could be career ladders that employees were climbing on.The belief was, that if you do your job well, you will keep your job - and you will get a promotion inhierarchy. Then came the recession of the 90’s which changed the beliefs of the psychological jobcontract.

Today, working life consists of projects. The fast changing environment will increasingly impact onour choices. The education or the profession doesn’t anymore define a person’s identity untilretirement. We need to understand and present our skills and competence areas and what wehave to offer for the next employer. The environment is changing so quickly that a degree is nomore than a ticket to working life, anything can happen after that.

How to design a career in this kind of a fast changing environment? We need to have self-knowledge and flexibility to understand what is valuable and possible and agility to seize anopportunity. What are you passionate about? What do you want to be good at? How can you makemoney with what is exciting for you and important for your community?

The sources of identity

In many fields there are no professions based on a specialized education but there are work rolesand responsibilities. Consequently there are no longer long-term identities based on profession.Instead identity is versatile and can be based on many things.

A portfolio career is a combination of paid labour and assignments (e.g consists of writing, teachingand consulting) or a series of assignments.

Leaps from one sector, function or task to another are typical in university environment(coordinator - specialist - project manager – team leader).

“My job just pays my rent” says the one whose real passion is in a hobby or volunteer work.

A sense of “who I am” is also based also on something more personal or contextual in one’s lifestory: relation to family, philosophy, age, gender or on expectations of the culture.

There will be new professions in the borders of old ones and combinations of old work roles, whichrequire new kinds of identities.

What is your identity based on?

Planned happenstance

Planned happenstance is a concept by John Krumboltz meaning “unplanned events could lead togood careers”. Unpredictable social factors, chance events and environmental factors areimportant influences on peoples’ lives. What qualities then would lead us to these goodopportunities? You will benefit if you have curiosity to explore “what next”. That’s how you mayhave found an interesting research project or a new job: you just opened your mouth in the rightplace and your skills were a solution to a problem at hand.

An example of planned happenstance in career management is the famous conductor Mr Esa-Pekka Salonen. Another conductor got sick and Salonen was asked to lead the orchestra playingGustav Mahler’s massive third symphony. He took the chance, used it well and became famous inone night. The trick was that he had already developed his skills for many years so that hiscompetence already was on higher level than his current position. Optimism to maximize benefitsfrom unplanned events and ongoing learning will lead us to good opportunities.

Employability

There is a lot you can do for your employment in spite of any situation in job market or otherexternal factors. Employability is a combination of an individual’s aptitude, knowledge and skills tofind a job, stay employed and develop a career.

Metacognitive skills are the most important factor that predicts success in any excellence.Metacognitive skills are important organizers: they enable planning, setting goals, initiating work,sustaining future-oriented problem solving activities, monitoring and managing progress on tasks todetect and correct errors, and keeping track of the effect of one’s behaviour on others.Metacognition includes knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning orfor problem solving. Metacognitive knowledge is about understanding of how to regulate thoseprocesses to maximize learning.

These are things that one can start exercising every morning, e.g. self-beliefs of efficacy and abilityto reflect and regulate one’s own learning.

Last year I coached an international student of Aalto University, who got recruited after a long job-hunting including many phases. I asked him, what he would say to that person he had been a yearbefore - or to another student in the same situation. He reflected for a while and mentioned threethings:

1) Be active (he had attended a course without knowing that it would be crucial in therecruitment decision later on).

2) Get support and talk to people.3) Have a good reputation (he had got a reference letter from his professor about his way of

working and behavior without knowing that his future boss one year later would be an oldacquaintance of the professor. This was the bit of luck that is also needed.).

Recognize your skills and productize what you have to offer

An employer wants to understand quickly what you can offer and you need to have a good matchwith the employer’s current needs. The challenge often is to know what kind of problems the

company struggles with at the moment so that you could present your skills as a solution. Lookingfor new challenges is not enough. A skills profile or career profile is the way to communicate whatyou have to offer as an answer to these problems. You want to showcase evidence of your skills,capacity, motivation and volition.

A person’s competence can be described as a letter T, where the horizontal line consists ofgeneric competences and transferable skills, such as language and cultural skills, communicationand negotiation skills, technology skills, ability to value other people’s ideas and use other’scompetences in projects. The vertical line is then the substance knowledge and the theoreticalknowledge of one’s own field. In many fields “letter T” is not enough, you’d even need “number Pi”with two columns of substance.

TFind a way to collect and update your learning results and skills profile regularly. The format can beof a traditional CV or of an electronic e-portfolio. When you have collected a basic portfolio, it iseasy to edit a sample portfolio for the employer. Understand your skills compared to all the others.They may well be the key for your next recruitment.

How to start? You can make a skills map using some mind map format. Think about studies, workexperiences and other experiences outside work year by year.

- What was needed to accomplish tasks?- What did you learn in projects?

A skills map is like a large puzzle and by picking pieces you will find words for your career profileand discover new work roles.

Aalto University graduates were asked five years after graduating, which skills they regardedimportant in their work (Aalto Career Services: Uraseurantaraportti 2007-2012: viisi vuottavalmistumisesta). Besides the obvious theoretical knowledge of one’s own study field, the skillsmentioned were generic: negotiating, teamwork, presentation, communication, language,leadership, counseling and project management skills, analytical systematical thinking, budgetaryplanning and knowledge of legislation and business basics.

Of course, good personal reputation is the most important competence area. As an alumnus ofAalto University put it: “If you are a challenging personality, it doesn’t help if you have the world’sgreatest dissertation”. You need to be the person whose skills are easy to choose for projects.

Plans for the future:

- Know yourself, reflect your learning, ask for feedback.- Understand your strengths and unique skills profile.- Get to know people.- Start with a direction that matters to you.- Know your options and the trends of working life.- Understand how companies work when they need new resources.- Make decisions and make an action plan.- Start today.

Seija Leppänen, psychologist, career coachAalto University Learning Services, Student Servicesseija.leppanen@aalto.fi