Career Change
Skill Assessment

A long list?

Your career change skill assessment is not just a matter of listing every skill that you think you have. It will serve you well to keep some things in mind as you make your list.

In what areas do you already have considerable skill?

This is a somewhat loaded question because there is an important assumption here. The assumption is that this is the direction that you're going to be moving in, and your career change skill assessment simply allows you to make a decision about the best thing you could be doing.

Cross map

The assessment can also be used to establish the skills that you have that are transferable. Transferable skills are those that can be cross mapped or cross contextualized.

For example, lawyers very often have good written communication skills, negotiation skills and the ability to anticipate problems. All of these can be extremely useful in a business context. A mother will have good organizational and budgeting skills, experience in prevention and dealing with crisis and mothers are usually very proud of their multitasking abilities!

So it is useful to be able to go behind the obvious 'good-with-kids' and consider other skills that you have acquired, either intentionally or unintentionally. And even in areas outside of your work. Have you developed other skills in your hobbies or sports, in voluntary work or in any other areas? Asking others what skills they think you have can be a very useful exercise.

 

That assumption...

But let's go back to the assumption we mentioned above. What if your passion is in some area where you're not particularly skilled? Because then your career change skill assessment will actually be drawing your attention to those skills that you will need to develop, including and in particular, decision making skills.

I have to learn more skills??

When you follow your passion, motivation is high and you learn very quickly. In fact, if you think about a hobby or sport that you really enjoyed, you realize that you picked up a lot of information and skills without even realizing that you were learning.

And you may find that many of your skills are transferable, but just not in the way you had imagined!

Your choice!

So now you get to make a decision.

Do you make a career change skill assessment that leads you into another career using the same skills, where life and work will end up much the same, or do you move in the direction of your passion, be the person you want to be, and develop the skills to have what you really want...?

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