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    Knowing Your Skills & Attributes: What Do We Mean by "Skills and Attributes"?

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    Marial Perlop
    This document provides information about identifying and communicating skills and attributes to employers. It begins by defining skills as abilities developed through training or practice, and attributes as personal characteristics. It explains that knowing your skills and attributes is important for career planning and job applications. The document advises thinking about skills in two categories - technical skills specific to industries, and employability or transferable skills that apply across roles. It lists skills and attributes that employers value, such as communication, teamwork, problem solving, and provides guidance on identifying, listing, and communicating examples of one's own skills and attributes to employers.

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    Knowing Your Skills & Attributes: What Do We Mean by "Skills and Attributes"?

    Uploaded by

    Marial Perlop
    43 views4 pages
    This document provides information about identifying and communicating skills and attributes to employers. It begins by defining skills as abilities developed through training or practice, and attributes as personal characteristics. It explains that knowing your skills and attributes is important for career planning and job applications. The document advises thinking about skills in two categories - technical skills specific to industries, and employability or transferable skills that apply across roles. It lists skills and attributes that employers value, such as communication, teamwork, problem solving, and provides guidance on identifying, listing, and communicating examples of one's own skills and attributes to employers.

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    Original Title

    CSW-FactSheet-KnowYourSkills

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    This document provides information about identifying and communicating skills and attributes to employers. It begins by defining skills as abilities developed through training or practice, and attributes as personal characteristics. It explains that knowing your skills and attributes is important for career planning and job applications. The document advises thinking about skills in two categories - technical skills specific to industries, and employability or transferable skills that apply across roles. It lists skills and attributes that employers value, such as communication, teamwork, problem solving, and provides guidance on identifying, listing, and communicating examples of one's own skills and attributes to employers.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    43 views4 pages

    Knowing Your Skills & Attributes: What Do We Mean by "Skills and Attributes"?

    Uploaded by

    Marial Perlop
    This document provides information about identifying and communicating skills and attributes to employers. It begins by defining skills as abilities developed through training or practice, and attributes as personal characteristics. It explains that knowing your skills and attributes is important for career planning and job applications. The document advises thinking about skills in two categories - technical skills specific to industries, and employability or transferable skills that apply across roles. It lists skills and attributes that employers value, such as communication, teamwork, problem solving, and provides guidance on identifying, listing, and communicating examples of one's own skills and attributes to employers.

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    You are on page 1of 4

    Knowing

    your skills &


    attributes

    Careers Great Southern


    Phone:(08) 9892 8749 Fax: (08) 9892 8898
    Email: [email protected] a.edu.au

    Careers South West


    Phone:(08) 9780 7210 or 9780 7070
    Email: careers_sw @swrc.wa.edu.au

    Wha t do we mean by skills and a ttributes?

    skill is the ability to perform a particular mental or physical activity which may be developed by

    training or practice. (From the National Centre for Vocational Education Research glossary at
    http://www.ncver.edu.au/research/core/cp9812.pdf)

    An

    attribute is a personal characteristic or attitude, like reliability or adaptability.

    Why do you need to know yours?


    Knowing your skills and attributes is important in planning your career path, but also crucial to getting a
    job. Throughout the recruitment process in networking, developing your resume, application and
    interviews you will need to know your skills and strengths and how to communicate them effectively to
    potential employers.

    Think of your skills in


    two ca te gories:

    Wha t skills to Employers


    want?

    1. Technical skills (or industry-specific

    Its not enough to have just the technical skills for

    skills), usually acquired through formal

    a job. Employers will also judge your suitability

    on- or off-the-job training and can be

    and capacity for a job through your employability

    used in a limited number of jobs.

    skills and personal attributes.

    These skills and attributes were identified by


    2.

    Employability skills (also called

    employers in a major Government-funded survey

    transferable or generic skills). These

    in 2002. To see the report go to http://

    skills apply in almost all jobs they are

    www.acci.asn.au/text_files/issues_papers/

    transferable from one role to another and

    Employ_Educ/ee21.pdf.

    you can continue to build on them


    throughout your life.

    To see our summary of these skills and attributes


    see overleaf.

    Read on to find out how to identify


    your skills and a ttributes

    Knowing your skills & attributes

    Identifying and communica ting


    your skills & a ttributes
    Start to list them
    To get started, see the Job Search Guides Recognise your Skills and Abilities at http://
    www.det.wa.edu.au/training/sub-sites/jobsearch/recognise.htm

    Swinburne University of Technologys Skills and Attributes http://www.swinburne.edu.au/corporate/


    careers/Skills%20and%20Attributes.pdf sheet has heaps of great info and examples on how to
    identify and describe your skills

    Use words from our summary of Personal Attributes and Skills from the Employablity Skills report
    (below & page3/4)

    Continue to build your list of skills and attributes


    .and examples of how youve used them.

    As you build skills, add them to your resume so its always current and READY TO GO!

    You can keep a diary or list of examples of how youve used your skills especially the transferable
    ones - and attitudes. Youll almost always get asked questions about these in applications and
    interviews, and they can sometimes be hard to remember on-the-spot, so have a few ready to go
    with! (If you havent done much paid work, use other examples from other situations such as

    Use the employablity skills list

    Use our summary of Personal Attributes and Skills from the Employablity Skills report (below) as
    a checklist to see where your strengths are and what you need to work on.

    Personal ATTRIBUTES
    Commitment

    Personal presentation
    Commonsense

    Balanced attitude to work


    and home life

    Honesty and integrity

    Positive self-esteem

    Ability to deal with pressure

    Enthusiasm

    Sense of humour

    Motivation

    Reliability

    Adaptability

    Loyalty

    Knowing your skills & attributes

    Employability SKILLS
    The Skill

    The Elements (facets of the skill that employers identified as important,


    noting that the mix and priority of these facets would vary from job to
    job)

    Communication

    Listening and understanding

    that contributes to

    Speaking clearly and directly

    productive and har-

    Writing to the needs of the audience

    monious relations
    between employees
    and customers

    Negotiating responsively
    Reading independently
    Empathising
    Using numeracy effectively understanding the needs of internal and external
    customers
    Persuading effectively
    Establishing and using networks
    Being assertive
    Sharing information
    Speaking and writing in languages other than English

    Teamwork that contributes to productive


    working relationships
    and outcomes

    Working with people of different ages, gender, race, religion or political persuasion
    Working as an individual and as a member of a team
    Applying teamwork skills to a range of situations, eg. Futures planning, crisis
    problem solving
    Identifying the strengths of team members
    Coaching, mentoring and giving feedback

    Problem solving

    Developing creative, innovative solutions

    that contributes to

    Developing practical solutions

    productive outcomes

    Showing independence and initiative in identifying problems and solving


    them
    Solving problems in teams
    Applying problem-solving strategies across a range of areas
    Testing assumptions taking the context of data and circumstances into account
    Resolving customer concerns in relation to complex project issues

    Initiative and enter-

    Adapting to new situations

    prise that contrib-

    Developing a strategic, creative, long-term vision

    utes to innovative

    Being creative

    outcomes

    Identifying opportunities not obvious to others


    Translating ideas into action
    Generating a range of options
    Initiating innovative solutions

    Knowing your skills & attributes

    The Skill (contd)

    Planning and organising that contribute to long-term


    and short-term strategic planning

    The Elements (facets of the skill that employers identified as important,


    noting that the mix and priority of these facets would vary from job to
    job)
    Managing time and priorities setting timelines, coordinating tasks for self
    and with others
    Being resourceful
    Taking initiative and making decisions
    Adapting resource allocations to cope with contingencies
    Establishing clear project goals and deliverables
    Allocating people and other resources to tasks
    Planning the use of resources including time management
    Participating in continuous improvement and planning processes
    Developing a vision and a proactive plan to accompany it
    Predicting weighing up risk, evaluating alternatives and applying evaluation
    criteria
    Collecting, analysing and organising information
    Understanding basic business systems and their relationships

    Learning that con-

    Managing own learning

    tributes to ongoing

    Contributing to the learning community at the workplace

    improvement and

    Using a range of mediums to learn mentoring, peer support, networking,


    information technology (IT), courses

    expansion in employee and company

    Applying learning to technical issues (eg. Learning about products) and


    people issues (eg. Interpersonal and cultural aspects of work)

    operations and out-

    Having enthusiasm for ongoing learning

    comes

    Being willing to learn in any setting on and off the job


    Being open to new ideas and techniques
    Being prepared to invest time and effort in learning new skills
    Acknowledging the need to learn in order to accommodate change

    Technology that

    Having a range of basic IT skills

    contributes to effec-

    Applying IT as a management tool

    tive execution of

    Using IT to organise data

    tasks

    Being willing to learn new IT skills


    Having the occupational health and safety knowledge to apply technology
    Having the appropriate physical capacity

    From Employability Skills for the Future (DEST 2002).


    This report was generated after extensive consultation with employers across Australia.

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