Identify Your Skills - Make a list

First, you need a list of skills. A good place to begin is to visit the Resume section of NCSOICC's website and scroll down the page. There you will find a list of skills. Make a copy and carefully review your previous work, whether for pay or not, and place a check next to your skills.

If you are or have been employed, look up the jobs you have had on the O*NET Code Connector. There you will see a list of skills typically required of that job. They call the skills "Detailed Work Activities". Add those to your list of skills.

Review the Foundation Skills carefully to identify those you have, and add them.

Your "Motivated Skills" or "Dependable Strengths". Pioneered by Bernard Haldane and later adopted by Richard Bolles in What Color is Your Parachute?, identifying your motivated skills can be a powerful approach for guiding your career direction. It works best if you take a methodical, analytical approach, or work with a person trained in this process (more . . .).

Make a list of all those achievements, accomplishments, or similar "good experiences" that you have had in the past 2 - 5 years - whether work-related or not. Those,

• You feel you did well, and
• Enjoyed doing, and
• Feel proud of

Rank order them and choose the seven best. Now, for each one, write down or tell someone,

• What you did,
  
• How you did it, and
• What happened.
• Add these skills to your list.

Review your list and make a mark next to any of the other skills that you consider your "motivated skills," the skills you most enjoy using.