Develop Your Career Narrative and Strategy
Your Professional Style and Positioning Statement Transferrable Skills Analysis Your Core Values Your Ideal Job Individual Personal Development
Your Professional Style & Positioning Statement
Before actively pursuing any position, you have to understand what you offer the employer. Organizations want to know how you will contribute in your role as both a leader and a team member – regardless of whether or not the role is responsible for formally leading a team or is more self-tasked.
This guide will help you establish the expectations and parameters of an ideal team that you are leading, and an ideal team you are a member of. Consider your past team experiences and aspects made them successful or not as you complete the table for each element.
Transferrable Skills Analysis
The following list of transferable skills is a great start to identifying and prioritizing your skills gained as a student, volunteer, during part-time jobs and internships, and through other experiences. Using the list below, check the box next to the skills you feel confident using. Then evaluate the checked skills and underline those that you enjoy doing daily.
Research & Information Management
⬜️ Locate and assimilate new information rapidly, applicable to a given problem
⬜️ Understand and synthesize large quantities of complex information
⬜️ Design research instruments (e.g., surveys) and effectively analyze results
⬜️ Develop organizing principles to effectively sort and evaluate data
Analysis & Problem Solving
⬜️ Clearly define a problem and identify possible causes
⬜️ Comprehend large amounts of information
⬜️ Form and defend independent conclusions
⬜️ Design an experiment, plan, or model that defines a problem, tests potential resolutions and implements a solution
Communication Skills – Written & Oral
⬜️ Prepare concise and logically written materials, for different audiences in different contexts: from abstracts to book-length manuscripts
⬜️ Edit and proofread
⬜️ Organize and communicate ideas and complex information effectively in oral presentations to specialized and non-specialized audiences in small and large groups
⬜️ Persuade others in both written and oral format using logical argument
⬜️ Write effective grant and research proposals
Interpersonal & Leadership Skills
⬜️ Facilitate group discussions or conduct meetings
⬜️ Teach skills or concepts to others
⬜️ Work effectively in teams, and collaborate on projects
⬜️ Navigate complex or bureaucratic environments effectively
⬜️ Diplomatically communicate and respond to positive or negative feedback
⬜️ Motivate others to complete projects Build consensus among groups or individuals (e.g., with your department/committee)
⬜️ Effectively mentor subordinates and/or peers
Organization & Management
⬜️ Manage a project or multiple projects from beginning to end
⬜️ Identify and establish goals or tasks to be accomplished in a reasonable timeline
⬜️ Organize and prioritize tasks
⬜️ Anticipate possible challenges
⬜️ Maintain flexibility in the face of changing circumstances
Supervision Skills
⬜️ Evaluate others’ performance (e.g., grade exams or papers)
⬜️ Monitor or oversee the work of others in a lab or classroom, and provide feedback
Entrepreneurial Skills
⬜️ Meet deadlines and manage competing priorities
⬜️ Perform under pressure
⬜️ Work independently
⬜️ Acquire funding (e.g., write grant/fellowship
Analyze your skills, strengths, and values
- Write down your top five skills that you enjoy doing daily and that you do well.
- Do your skills cluster in a specfic skill category?
Use your transferable skills to explore career options
- Go to www.indeed.com and enter in one of the transferrable skill categories you have identified as a search term with either your discipline, or an interest area. (Example: environmental science communication)
- Create a list of 10 position titles you found.
- Creata a list of 10 organizations you found.
Your next steps
Visit speacareerhub.indiana.edu
- Go to the Resources tab and select Online Resources.
- Search the various websites with the position titles you listed above.
- Find contacts within the organizations you find in this search using either LinkedIn and/or the organization website. (Organize in a spreadsheet.)
- Reach out and request an informational interview with those contacts.
Go to LinkedIn.com
- Search for Indiana University; go to that page and select the Alumni button.
- Search for the position titles and organizations you listed above.
- Add the alumni and organizations to your spreadsheet.
- Reach out and request an informational interview.
Your Core Values
This guide will help you determine your core values and how you can use these values understand your priorities and purpose when looking for opportunities.
Your Ideal Job
Everybody has their own preferences about work. But many people fail to state them clearly. This guide will help you think about your job preferences and will help you articulate these preferences.
Individual Personal Development
This guide will help you determine your strengths, weaknesses, and will help you identify the skills employer’s your interested in would like to see.