What Skills Will You Prioritize?

As you’ve already noticed, there are A LOT of skills related to a career in People Analytics. And, these last couple of activities may have given you quite a long list of ones you’d like to develop further. Probably more than you can reasonably focus on at one time. So, I recommend continuing to leverage the ikigai concept, to help you create a prioritized list of those skills for you to focus your development. It is not important how long your priority list is. Everyone is different. Some will want to create a short skill development plan of a few items they can focus on now and they will return to this activity in the future. Others love to go through all the skills to create a long list that will serve as a guide for a long way into the future. The steps below will walk you through an ikigai-focused prioritization strategy, but feel free to stop at any point where the list feels long enough based on how long you would like this plan to serve you.

Use the below steps to prioritize the skills that you identified for “development” in the “Self-Discovery: What You Enjoy & What You’re Good At” and the “Explore & Engage: In-Demand Skills” activities.

• Add priority 1 skills to your list: Skills that inspire you, grow you, and open opportunities. Start with the “Explore & Engage: In-Demand Skills” activity. Look for any skills that appeared on one of the job posting exploration tables in which you indicated it was both an interest and that further development was needed to meet the job requirements. These are skills you are already drawn to, you already have a personal desire to develop, and that will open more career opportunities for you if developed further.
• Add priority 2 skills to your list: Skills that keep you happy and/or paid. Priority 2 skills may not overlap in all the ikigai areas but are still worth developing. We humans love to learn, grow, and be challenged, developing skills, even ones that may not necessarily be in demand for a job that we can identify today can be instrumental in keeping you energized and enjoying your career (happiness enabling skills). And, it is possible, that these skills can become in demand in the future and there you will be ready and available to offer your expertise. There are also going to be some skills that you aren’t super interested in building for their own sake, but that are critical to helping you land the kinds of roles and complete the kinds of projects that you are passionate about (career-enabling skills). If this was a perfect world, I’d love for you to have a career where you only focus on developing skills you are passionate about, or at least interested in. But, even the best jobs have some activities or tasks that we aren’t going to be completely passionate about. And, they usually require some skills that we may not decide to develop and grow in on our own. But, if we want to have a career where we get to do the kind of work that incites passion and where we can have ikigai moments as often as possible, we may need to have some additional skills that help us do that kind of work. Sometimes it’s worth giving the world what it needs even if it’s not a passion of yours, especially when you can get paid for doing it. [If you’ve seen job postings that have multiple aspects you want as part of your career and they all have required skills that aren’t on your passion skill – well, guess what, it might be time to start thinking of those as ‘passion enabling skills.’ Or, in ikigai terms vocation skills. These are our “Priority 2 Career Enabler Skills.” Even the most fun activities have some aspect to them that is less appealing. Think of building these skills like putting together a toy before you can play with it. Taking time to develop these skills will allow you to do the less exciting tasks quicker and more efficiently so you can have more time for the fun stuff, and it will ensure that you have access to the kinds of opportunities where you can do the work that you are truly passionate about.
  • Add Priority 2 Passion Enabler Skills to your list. Review the “Self-Discovery: What You Enjoy & What You’re Good At” activity and add any skills you marked as a “Passion” and indicated a desire to develop further. For now, don’t include those for which you only have a general interest. You want to reserve your priority 2 spots only for those you are most passionate about. So that when you work on developing them, that effort will keep you truly energized, happy, and passionate about your people analytics career.
  • Add Priority 2 Career Enabler Skills to your list. Re-review the job posting tables from the “Explore & Engage: In-Demand Skills” activity. All skills for which you indicated further development was needed and for which you had an interest or passion should already be on your list as a Priority 1 item. From the remaining in-demand skills you should select the ones you believe would be good career enablers for you. This is a subjective exercise, but here are some things to help you select:
    • How do you feel about the job it was linked to? Is the skill is aligned to a role you would very much like to have now or in the future, then it is almost certainly a career-enabling skill.
    • How in-demand is the skill? Did the skill appear in multiple job roles? Are there a lot of other in-demand skills related to this one? Even though you didn’t mark it as a passion, it could help open the doors to the kind of career where you can spend more time doing the things you love.
    • How do you feel about the skill? Is it a skill you could potentially become interested in? Or is it a skill you genuinely dislike and do not want to spend time learning? How you feel about a topic will affect how well you learn it. If you truly hate the idea of learning about something, don’t put it this high on the priority list. Don’t force yourself. 
• Add priority 3 skills to your list: Nice to Have Skills. This set of skills are those that would bring value, but that you may not be able to prioritize or focus on right now. It is still important to identify these skills in your development plan. Mostly for taking advantage of lucky opportunities. My recommendation for priority 3 skills, is not to go out and seek development opportunities directly, but to be aware of them so that you don’t miss a great opportunity for development if it happens to present itself. For example, let’s say you are at a conference and multiple sessions are happening, none of them are in your passion areas but you still need to choose which one to go to. If you are aware of your priority 3 level skills you might find an opportunity to learn about them in one of the sessions. Or, maybe you are considering how to approach a work project, if you realize that it could be done using one of the skills on your priority 3 list, you should take the opportunity to build that skill instead of something that isn’t a priority at all. Additionally, as you achieve your skill development on higher priority items, your list will get shorter and you may want to promote your priority 3 skills up a level.
  • Add Priority 3 Interest Skills to your list. Re-review the “Self-Discovery: What You Enjoy & What You’re Good At” activity for any skills that are not already on the list as a priority 1 or priority 2 item that you marked as an “Interest” and for which you indicated a desire to develop further. Add these to your list as priority 3 interesting skills.
  • Add Priority 3 Job Skills to your list. Re-review the job posting tables from the “Explore & Engage: In-Demand Skills” activity. Add any skills for which you indicated further development was needed that are not already a Priority 1 or Priority 2 that you don’t hate. These are your priority 3 job skills. These aren’t critical, but they could be potentially useful for your career.

• Optional: Since skills can include both those you already have strength in and those you do not. You may also want to consider the mix of “specialization skills” or “expansion skills” in your list. Specialization means going deeper into something you are already good at; further development will allow you to master it or become a specialist in that topic. Development of a skill you are not currently strong in will expand your skill set and breadth of expertise. Breadth and depth are both valuable and a well-balanced development plan will include both. Consider adding these labels to your list to assess if it matches your desired mix of breadth and depth.