Let’s say, hypothetically, you have to hire someone for a job. What would you base your decision on — a candidate’s educational qualifications, or their suitability for the job? If you chose the latter, then you’re already a part of the culture that supports a skills-based workforce. 81% of companies are making that same choice. So, if you’re in the market for a job, think like a recruiter. Start focusing on your skills, and that starts with a skills audit.
What is a skills audit?
A skills audit (also commonly referred to as skills inventory) is the process of identifying your current skill set (hard and soft!) and your professional goals and then finding a way to marry the two. A skills audit will help you analyze your strengths, your interests, and your talents to see how they fit into your career growth. In this process, we’re actually looking for the gaps. What’s stopping us from reaching those career goals? Where do our current skills and our job aspirations not fit together? From there, it’s easier to take a look at what you’ll need to bridge those gaps.
Why do you need a skills audit?
- Know your core competencies better: A skills audit will highlight your strengths and your interests. Once you know those, the way ahead is only up!
- Know where you need to improve: A skills inventory not only tells you the skills you have, it also tells you what you don’t have. Once you know these gaps, you can build up from there.
- Find out which areas you should invest in: Somewhere in the middle of your strengths and your areas of improvement are skills that you are likely to do well at, skills you can get better at, and skills you won’t need much of. With these metrics, we can easily devise a plan on where and how we want to invest our time and resources.
- Future-ready: A huge part of the skills audit process is understanding what your career requires now, and in the near future, because these requirements can change pretty fast. A skills audit will also take care of that by showing you the skills that you may need in the future for career growth.
- Career pathing: Same rules apply! If you’re looking for career growth, even within your current company, a skills audit can help you figure out what you should be prioritizing to hit your next goal.
- Tap into your best potential: The biggest merit of a skills inventory process is that it puts you in touch with your own possibilities, your untapped potential. Who doesn’t want that?
Now the question is…how do I get started? How do I unlock my best life?
How to do a skills audit
So, you’ve decided it’s time for a full-blown assessment of where your professional life is headed and how to get there faster. We at PowerToFly love all things development and growth, so we spoke to our network of experts to create a concrete skills audit resource. It's focused on identifying your strengths, pinpointing skill gaps, and bridging those gaps with a customized learning plan.
Keep reading for more insight on simple steps you can take to conduct your own skills audit:
Skill detailing and labeling:
Of course, to make a skills inventory, we have to look at what’s in stock. Start by writing down your skills and grouping them into these three categories: technical skills, business skills, and people skills.
Technical skills are the specific tools and technologies relevant for a job. For instance, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for a graphic designer, but Python and CSS for a web developer.
Business skills are those that come in handy for all professional endeavors — time management, critical thinking, team building, etc.
People skills are interpersonal skills that also help in most professions, such as empathy and communication.
Career goals:
After cataloging your existing skill sets, decide where you want to be professionally.
Start with answering these five questions:
- What kind of work satisfies me?
- What are my short-term (0–2 years) career goals?
- What are my medium-term (3-5 years) career goals?
- What are my long-term (5+ years) career goals?
- What is my ultimate career goal?
Be patient, because this might require some self-reflection and time.
Once you have some additional clarity, you can start to construct your vision for the future. But, as someone wise once said, “to understand the future, we have to go back in time.”
Sketching you:
Your professional and personal history has clues for you already. Examining your history will hopefully tell you which roles and types of companies you most enjoyed, what areas you could drive tangible results, what you liked, and what you disliked. Your personal track record is a guiding force; don’t sideline it! What are your core values? What inspires you outside of work? Your personality, relationships, creative ambition, and expectations in personal life should all be considered.
This is important! Let’s say you want a more nomadic lifestyle, but so far you have only worked desk jobs. Your career path can now also align with the person that you are.
Rating:
This is where we get our hands dirty. Based on all the answers you have in the third stage of sketching yourself, we’re starting to identify new skills. Let’s say you are someone who is strongly inclined to honesty and impact. Then we want to list that in your skills as well, and the list you made earlier may change some.
Start rating each of these skills on a scale of 10, based on how proficient you are in each and how well you can utilize them professionally.
You may have already guessed it, but the low-scoring skills are the areas of improvement where major upskilling needs to happen.
Future-focused skills:
Don’t ignore industry trends, either! With the tech advancements happening faster than the speed of light now, you can start to find the skills that would increase your shot at job security.
While creating our skills inventory kit, we conducted extensive research and found out a few metrics to give you a boost.
Among technical skills; data management, data analytics, and cybersecurity are predicted to be the top three in 2030. Sites like Skillcrush are all things tech and upskilling, and you can start by picking up on these skills today to emerge smarter and better in the near future.
Our report on what diverse talents want in 2024 also highlights the soft skills that will be most important in the future. Strategic thinking, problem solving and decision-making, and communication are the top three runners. Looking to sharpen your soft skills?PowerUp is a community and expert-driven platform creating leaders for tomorrow with knowledge and care.
