7 Self-Discovery: Identify Your Strengths
There are multiple ways to identify your strengths. Most of us know what some of them are, but if you are unsure, ask people who know you and who work with you. You can ask them simply what they see as your strengths or ask them what topics they would come to you for support and advice. Alternatively, you could make a list of skills (check out Steps 2 & 3 of this guide for a couple of lists) and have people you know identify the ones from the list you are strong in. If you want to get a more validated assessment of your strengths, you can consider something like the Gallup Clifton StrengthsFinder which includes a test to identify your strengths backed by research spanning over 14 million people worldwide and over four decades. There are also plenty of other free surveys out there to identify your strengths. Just know that most of those surveys aren’t rigorously studied and don’t go into specific technical skills assessments, so you will want to evaluate the results critically. It’s “okay” to only pay attention to the findings that resonate with you and ignore the others. For example, if you find yourself saying “Yeah, I do tend to do that” it’s probably a good starting point. If not, just move along. The point of this advice is not for you to do a rigorous assessment of yourself. It is meant to encourage you to spend some time thinking about the skills and strengths you have today that you can leverage to start small and to start now (Step 1).
So, take a moment now and fill out the below table.
Warning: Don’t limit yourself to only skills you think are aligned with people analytics. Start first considering your strengths without any other considerations and only after you have them down then spend time thinking about how they could be applied. It may take some time and creativity to find a way to apply them, but it will be worth it when you find that your strength makes you truly unique in terms of what you can bring to this career.
| My Top 5 Strengths | Why This is a Strength for Me: | How could I apply this to a People Analytics Career: |
| Example:
Inquisitive |
I am always asking “why?” I want more info about everything and to know why it happened. | I could take business problems like “people are quitting” and identify the important questions such as “what types of people are quitting?” “what are the reasons for leaving?” “does one group leave at a higher rate than another?” so that an analyst could answer them with people analytics. |
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* Feel free to add more rows, you are great at way more than 5 things!
Once you have taken time to identify your strengths and how they can apply to a people analytics career, be sure to save the list. When you apply to a job, head into a performance discussion, or just feel discouraged, pull the list out. You are already awesome and have everything you need to get started. So why not get started now?
“Everyone can probably do at least one thing better than ten thousand other people.” – Marcus Buckingham