Understanding Your Personal Strengths
April 2, 2016 by Dr. Letitia Wright
Filed under Featured Articles, Front Page
Understanding Your Personal Strengths
Remember that working doesn’t have to feel like work. That may seem like a contradicting statement to many people out there, but it’s the truth! When you look back on your life, you want to make sure that you worked a job you didn’t hate and learned a lot about it as you went. It’s not expected that you go to work every day so excited that you can’t sit still, but the ideal goal is to have a job that makes you feel accomplished at the end of a work day.
If you want to get your dream job, you have to know where your strengths lie, that’s what determines where you should work.
Your personal strengths are not the things that you enjoy doing, necessarily. Your personal strengths are those characteristics that are natural to you in a way that doesn’t feel like work: they are skills that you’re interested in developing, topics you’re interested learning about, etc. They’re different for everyone, and you learn what your personal strengths are by experiencing and learning about different topics and skills. This include: leadership, problem solving, organization etc. That’s not to say that you have to love all of these tasks with every fiber of your being, they’re just skills that come naturally to you.
It only makes sense that you will want to work in a job and an environment that encourages you to use these skills, right? Think about your current position. Surely you can think of someone in your workplace that is a go-getter, ambitious, and always seems to begging the boss’ attention, right? S/He is the one who is always in early and seems to take joy in everything that goes on. This is the perfect example of someone who is in the perfect niche for their personal skills. They are doing a job that they love and that is tailored to their personal skill set. The good news is that everyone has a personal skill set that can be identified, developed, and used to make you and your employer happy.
The University of Kent offers a test that will tell you exactly what your strengths are. By asking targeted questions and other professional methods, you will be able to get a list of what your personal skills are. With that list, you can target your job search and start to look for jobs that put to use each of these special skills that are a key part of your personality. In the interview process, you’ll find that your potential employer will see your enthusiasm for the job and be more inclined to hire you because you make a good fit.
When you get into a workplace that maximizes your personal skill set, you’ll know it instantly, if you didn’t when you were applying. Coming to work will no longer be a chore, and even on the bad days, you’ll still feel as though you are being useful and getting things done. You’ll scale up the professional ladder faster or at par with your coworkers and may even thing “Whoa, already I have a promotion? That was fast.” The thing is, employers watch for passion on what you’re doing, and the best way to find that dream job is by finding one that lines up with your personal skills.
No matter what stage you are at in your life understanding these skills is important. It’ll help you target workplaces, but it will also help you plan out your future if you are looking at schools and professional courses. Knowing your strengths will help you choose an educational direction to head in, whether you know what they are before you start, or discover them while you do it. This will steer you in the right direction so that you know how to plan our your education, and then the right career path will make itself known to you.
Knowing what your personal strengths are is essential to doing well in a workplace, as mentioned, but not just in being happy. Your superiors will recognize your effort to do a job well, even if you feel as though you are not putting in all that much effort at all. You will succeed in your career path much faster and easier than in a job that doesn’t allow you to use your skills. As with any position, your skills with strengthen and your weaknesses will become less noticeable. Being in the right workplace will give you space and time to develop, strengthen and use these important personal skills to everyone’s benefit.
Once you have these skills figured out, you are able to identify what your dream job is. Many people feel “okay” with their jobs, but not a lot love what they do. By simply understanding how important your personal strengths and skills are to the process of identifying and flourishing in your dream job, you’ll be able to make that dream career become a very honest reality. Remember, we aren’t talking about “I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut/power ranger, etc.” This is something along the lines of “I’ve always wanted to work on my carpentry/leadership skills, etc.” These jobs are out there and ready for you to put your natural skill set to the test as soon as you ready to try something new and exciting.
Your natural and personal strengths make you unique from everyone else in the world around you. People may have the same strengths as those close by, but no one can ever do things the exact same way that you do. So, take advantage of that and develop your strengths on your own. Take the test offered at the University of Kent and see for yourself what those skills are. They’ll lead you to the right career path for you and you, your loved ones, your employer, and the world in general will benefit form it. Work doesn’t have to feel like torture: make sure you’re in the right place for you and your skills.