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 by:

- Managed a mother’s day event to MKF

- Organized BE The X Conference with BPVC and BPSC
- Organizing the first MKF Conference
- Managed several events with BPVC such as national day and color run.

All above includes leadership, time management and planning and organizing skills.

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 1-COMMERCIAL
STUDIES IN HIGH
SCHOOL.
2- Logistics in
Polytechnic university

Informal learning 1- A VOLUNTEER

IN BPVC
2- PROBLEM
SOLVING
CIRTIFICATE
from MKF
3- TIME
MANAGMNET
WORKSHOP

Learning goals? 1- IMPROVE MY

ENGLISH
2- HAVE THE
REQUIREDS
AVIATION
KNOWLEDGE FOR WORK

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? ESFJ
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. Guardians of
birthdays, holidays and celebrations, ESFJs are generous entertainers. They enjoy and joyfully
observe traditions and are liberal in giving, especially where custom prescribes.
4. What jobs were suggested to you based on the results of the personality test? In childcare,
nursing, teaching or religious institutions.
5. Provide three to four statements that describe your workplace habits. ESFJs enjoy being in
charge. They see problems clearly and delegate easily, work hard and play with zest.

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

ESFJs tend to be sociable and outgoing, understanding what others need and expressing
appreciation for their contributions. They collect the necessary facts to help them make a
decision and enjoy setting up effective procedures. Respecting the Wisdom of Leadership.
Encourage, lift and strengthen one another. For the positive energy spread to one will be felt by
us all.

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)

1- Honesty
2- Punctuation
3- Loyalty
4- Leering
5- Creativity

These are the most important work values in my point of view as I believe these values
results a peaceful, loving and successful work environment.

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 Evidence Skills I need to Development plan

develop
PLANNING AND PERSUADING: Using tact and diplomacy.
ORGANISING: Being able to work effectively
when under pressure.
TEAMWORK: Taking a share of the LEADERSHIP: Taking the initiative.
responsibility

WRITTEN INVESTIGATING, Differentiating between practical

COMMUNICATION: Gathering, analysing and ANALYSING AND and impractical solutions.
arranging your information in a PROBLEM SOLVING:
logical sequence.

VERBAL Listening carefully to what others

COMMUNICATION: are saying.

FLEXIBILITY:

Planning ahead, but having

alternative options in case things
go wrong

Skills I have:
Thinking through in advance what you want to say.
Gathering/analysing/arranging info. logically.
Developing your argument in a logical way.
Able to condense info./produce summary notes.
Adapting your writing style for different audiences.
Listening carefully to what others are saying.
Clarify & summarise what others are communicating.
Helping others to define their problems.
Being sensitive to body language.
Using body language/dress/conduct/speech effectively
Keeping business telephone calls to the point.
Keeping calm in the face of difficulties
Having alternative options in case things go wrong
Responding to sudden changes in circumstances
Putting your points across in a reasoned way.
Understanding the needs of the person you are with.
Handling objections to your arguments.
Working cooperatively towards a common goal.
Contributing your own ideas effectively in a group.
Listening to others' opinions.
Taking a share of the responsibility.
Being assertive - rather than passive or aggressive.
Accepting constructive criticism & giving feedback.
Making decisions & seeing them through.
Persevering when things are not working out.
Accepting responsibility for mistakes.
Prepared to adapt goals in changing situations.
Managing your time effectively.
Setting priorities - most important/most urgent.
Setting priorities - most important/most urgent.
Identifying the steps needed to achieve your goals.
Being able to work effectively when under pressure.
Completing work to a deadline.
Clarifying a problem before deciding action.
Collecting, classifying & summarising data
Identifying the key factors in a problem.
Using creativity to generate alternative solutions.
Calculating percentages.
Multiplying & dividing accurately.
Using a calculator.
Reading & interpreting graphs & tables.
Using statistics.
Organising your personal finances effectively.
Word-processing skills.
Using spreadsheets
Using the Internet & email.
Accepting responsibility for your views & actions.
Working under your own initiative.
Making choices based on your own judgement.
Paying care & attention to quality in all your work.
Skills I don’t have:
Avoiding jargon.
Building a rapport when speaking to groups
Using interesting ways to talk to groups
Persisting in the face of unexpected difficulties
Emphasising the positive aspects of your argument.
Making concessions to reach agreement.
Using tact & diplomacy.
Taking the initiative.
Organising & motivating others.
Setting objectives which are achievable.
Setting priorities - most important/most urgent.
Recognising inconsistencies in reasoning.
Using practical, not impractical solutions
Using databases.
Designing web pages.
Programming skills.
Taking the opportunity to learn new skills.
Developing the drive to achieve your goals.
 6. Career Interests

7. 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?

Very well
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?

Resources, information and personal. They will be used a lot in my career in

the future. Also, they will help me in my degree courses as I will be able to
have good information sources for my assignment which will help me
getting higher grades.

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?
Systems and interpersonal. As in the future I will be working with a group of people and I need to know
how to deal with them. Also, I need to have IT skills as it will be used in my future career.