Market Yourself

GS6203

Learning about myself

Having a clear picture of your unique talents, interests, values and skills will be the base of your
career-planning journey.

Tips for completing self-assessments:

• read instructions carefully

• be honest
• remember it’s not a test – there are no right or wrong answers. If you do not answer self-
assessment questions honestly and accurately, you will end up with information that will
not be helpful to you in your career planning.

1. Work/Life Experiences

Your work and life experiences help shape who you are and may include:

 hobbies
 sports or other leisure activities
 volunteer work
 paid work
 travel
 unpaid work

When you review these activities, you may begin to see patterns or themes. These patterns can help to
set you apart from other job seekers with similar work experience or education. For instance, you may
notice that your life /work related experiences, involve a high level of challenge, or problem solving, or
dealing with people, or customer service, etc.
Activity
Use the space provided to list your work/life experiences (ex: management training, customer service,
soccer coach, volunteering, etc.). Look at your list – do you see any patterns or similar roles (ex:
leadership roles)? If yes, use a variety of coloured highlighters to identify patterns (ex: highlight all
leadership roles in yellow).

Volunteering

Think about how the experiences you listed could relate to your career. Are there any experiences that
could lead to paid employment? Highlight those in a different colour.

2. Learning Experiences

Your education and learning experiences shape the type of work that you are able to do. These
experiences could include formal schooling (ex: general education development, high school, college,
university). They could also include informal education and training (ex: professional development,
courses, seminars, workshops). Be sure to consider learning you’ve done through your life experiences
(ex: volunteering, on-the-job training, family life).

Activity
Use the table provided on the next page to list your education experiences (courses completed,
professional development workshops).
Formal learning Project
management

Management
information
systems

Informal learning Cooking

Crochet

Learning goals?

3. Personal Attributes
Everyone has characteristics and personality traits that make them unique. These form their personality
or personal style. Knowing your style preferences will help you to choose an occupation or work
environment where you can be yourself and be appreciated for who you are. Although you may
sometimes need to work in situations where you can’t totally be yourself, it’s hard to keep this up long
term.

There are lots of different assessments available to help you determine your personality preferences or
personal style. Some common assessments include:

• Personality Dimensions®
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®

http://www.humanmetrics.com/hr/jtypesresult.aspx
Activity
1. What is your Personality code?
2. Use the space provided to list five to 10 of your strongest personal attributes.
3. Provide three statements related to your communication and learning style.
4. What jobs were suggested to you based on the results of the personality test?
5. Provide three to four statements that describe your workplace habits

You can get the information from the links below:

http://www.humanmetrics.com/hr/jtypesresult.aspx
https://www.opp.com/en/tools/MBTI/MBTI-personality-types
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp
https://www.16personalities.com/personality-types
 4. Work Values
Knowing and understanding what’s important to you about work will help you to choose an
occupation and a work environment that matches your values. Are you most concerned with earning
enough money to pay your bills or advancing your skills and experience?

Based on the work values activities you have done in class list below your top five work-related values.
Explain briefly why they are important to you. (This is from the material on Moodle in week 2 –3
Understanding workplace values)

Honesty

Independency

5. Skills

Skills – or abilities – are things that you are able to do. Some skills are job-specific and can be used in
only one line of work. Skills that can be used in many occupations are known as transferrable skills.
You may have developed these skills in school, on the job, volunteering or through life experiences. In
your career journey, you might hear about “soft” skills and “hard” skills. Soft skills are sometimes called
“employability” skills. These are the skills you need to enter, stay in and progress in the world of work.
Activities

1. Access this link https://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/skillsinventory.html to analyze our

employability skills and follow the instructions to complete the table below:
2. Choose 5 skills that you currently have and provide a brief statement as evidence of your claim
3. Choose 3 skills that you need to develop and that are relevant to the job you would like to do in
the future. Explain briefly how you plan to develop those skills

SKILLS I HAVE SKILLS TO IMPROVE

 Skills I have Evidence
Word-processing I use word processing almost
skills. every day. Academically I do my
all of my assignments through it.
Reading & In English we had an exam on
interpreting graphs analyzing and describing a graph.
& tables
Using the Internet Obviously, nowadays everybody
& email. uses internet to send emails or
anything else. For example,
sending emails to the tutors or
sending CVs.
Designing web MIS course has helped me in
pages. identifying this skill. As we were
required to develop a web page
for a company we’ve created.
6. Career Interests
Skills I need to Development plan
develop
Managing your time I set a deadline for almost anything
effectively. I do.
Showering
Eating
Going to the gym
Completing work to a Once I learn to stick to a deadline
deadline. then my timings well be well
managed automatically.
Developing the drive Write simple goals down on a place
to achieve new goals that I can see every day.
Every morning achieved one I tick it,
which it will motivate to achieve
more bigger and important tasks.
Using databases Attending IT courses for beginners.
 1. A graphic representation of your skills

Activity

Access the link below and cut and paste the skills wheel on the space below.
http://college.cengage.com/masterstudent/shared/content/wheels/scans_wheel/discovery_wheel.h
tml
1. How well does the wheel represent your different skills?

2. What are your strongest skills and how are they relevant to the job you
would like to have in the future/ or to the degree course you are studying?

3. What skills do you need to improve on and why are they necessary for the
job you would like to have/degree course you are studying?