Identifying Your Overall Skill Level

The first step is to make an overall assessment of your skill level, to enable you to see in what areas you feel you have skills.

Think about your skills in relation to the four main areas we looked at in finding your job interests : things, people, ideas and data.

1. Things

These skills involve making or constructing things, and so might include the ability to understand how things work, the manual skills in using tools and working with machinery or having good hand-eye coordination.

2. People

These skills involve working with people, and so might include managing and organising, persuading and negotiating, supporting and giving help, teaching, entertaining, understanding other people, and other important interpersonal skills.

3. Ideas

These skills involve being creative, and so might include having an interest in ideas and how to develop them, designing or adapting things, being innovative, improvising, experimenting and investigating.

4. Data

These skills involve handling information, and so might include working with figures in an IT environment, interpreting data, and deciding how best to present and communicate information.

Rate Yourself

Look at each of the areas in the above list - how do you rate yourself in each of these areas? Are you excellent at working with people, things, data and ideas? Good? OK? No good at all? How do you think you compare to other people working in the jobs that you are interested in?

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