General skills can, of course, also be used when you are doing a job search or applying for the same type of job in the same type of industry. If you were applying for a job of a social work case manager at an agency where the caseload was particularly heavy, you might want to emphasize some of your general skills having to do with organization. Suppose your list of general skills looked like this:
• Assessing
• Counseling
• Researching
• Reporting
• Coordinating
• Organizing
If an interviewer were to ask you, "What are your strengths?" you might choose to answer in the following way, introducing your three most salient strengths and then elaborating on one of the strengths, such as in the answer cited below:
QUESTION: What are your greatest strengths?
ANSWER: Well, some of my greatest strengths lie in the areas of counseling, reporting, and organization. An example of an experience in which my organizational skills were very important is a position I had with Ford Human Services in Richmond, Virginia, before I started my job searching. I was responsible for a caseload of over 75 clients, which meant that I had to keep careful notes and records, and, of course, I had to review these notes before each meeting with a client. I was commended for the attention to detail in my reports, which I was able to provide because I had kept such well-organized ?les on my clients. I am proud that because of my organizational skills, I was able to handle such a large client base. I'm con?dent I will give your clients the same level of respect and detailed, indepth attention.
You can see a pattern emerging:
1. You mention three skills that you used in a prior job that would also be of value in your next occupation. (We'll discover, in Chapter 8, how to assess which skills are important to your interviewer.)
2. You pick one skill that you believe would be most important
for the particular job you're applying for.
3. You tell a very short story about that particular skill. You can elaborate on this story by providing speci?c numbers, percentages, feedback, rankings, and dollar amounts. (We're going to explore this technique more fully in Chapter 3 on Q statements.)
4. You mention that you are proud of your achievement.
5. You link your past accomplishments or results with your future performance at the company you're applying for, by saying, "And that's exactly what I'd like to do for your
company." (We'll talk about why this is so important in Chapter 5.)
General Skills Inventory
Now it's time for you to take a look at the general skills you possess to be successful in your online job search or just real one as well:
1. Scan the following list of general skills.
2. Make a checkmark next to those skills you have used reasonably well. It's possible that you have used a skill only once but are still reasonably pro?cient with it so that you could use it again if you had the chance.
Be generous with yourself as you decide whether you have these skills. You need not be an expert in them, nor is it necessary that you have used them in
a work environment. Think carefully back to school, recreational, social, or volunteer situations in which you may have used these skills:
Advertising Communicating verbally
Advising Communicating nonverbally
Analyzing data
Analyzing situations Communicating feelings
Arranging events Communicating ideas
Assessing performance Communicating instructions
Assessing progress
Assessing quality Conceptualizing
Assisting Consulting
Attending to detail Correcting
Auditing Counseling
Building structures Data processing
Building relationships Decision making
Building credibility Decorating
Building cooperation Delegating
Budgeting Developing systems
Calculating Developing designs
Classifying Developing talent
Client relations Diagnosing
Coaching Directing
Corresponding Drafting
Communicating in writing Drawing
Driving Nurturing
Editing Observing
Educating Operating computers
Empathizing Organizing
Enforcing Prescribing
Engineering Program managing
Evaluating Programming computers
Filing Project managing
Financial planning Promoting
Forecasting Public speaking
Formulating Recording
Fund raising Repairing
Healing Reconstructing
Helping others Reporting
Implementing Researching
Imagining Sales and marketing
In?uencing Selling
Initiating Servicing equipment
Intuiting Servicing customers
Intervening Supervising
Inventing Surveying
Investigating Team building
Leading people Team leading
Lecturing Telephone calling
Lifting Tending
Listening Tooling
Managing tasks Training
Marketing Troubleshooting
Marketing and communications Understanding
Massaging Using the Internet
Other general skills not mentioned
3. Now, go back over the list again from beginning to end. This time around, circle those skills that are checked off and that you want to continue to use first in your job searches and then in your next job.
4. Now you have a list in which some of the skills have both
a checkmark and a circle, which means the following:
a. You can use them.
b. You like to use them.
c. You would like to continue to use them now doing either your local job search or international job search or any other and then in your next job.
5. There is one more step, and this is the most challenging one yet. Pick out six of the skills that you have on the
your list that are circled and checkmarked.
When it comes to narrowing the number of your skills down to six, it's likely that you may be thinking, "I'd like to use almost all of these skills doing a job search and later, when already working. I enjoy using them so much that I hate to narrow the list down to just six." Think about this for a moment: The last time you bought or leased a car, did you actually consider every single feature the car had—from the axle to the hoses to the spark plugs to the tail lights?
Would you have been enticed to purchase the car if the advertisement or the salesperson had just said "This car has all features" and did nothing to explain speci?cally what the most important features of the car were? Wouldn't it have been more engaging if the advertisement or salesperson had mentioned six or seven special features that you were actually looking for, like air-conditioning, an audio system with six speakers, or a 5-year unconditional factory warranty?
The "special features" on this car are like the selected skills you bring with you first when you start your job search and next to the interview.
By mentioning the "features" you know you have and you know the employer wants, you show the employer that you're equipped to solve the kinds of problems inherent in the job.
(We'll learn some easy ways to determine which skills are important to the employer in Chapter 4 on the topic of research.)