Whenever we decide to move jobs or transition to a different career or industry, we always scramble to update our resumes. The same is true when we are asked to draw up a list of our skills or accomplishments. Conducting a personal skills audit is useful when planning change jobs so you can to up-skill yourself and be job-ready.

What is a personal skills audit? It is when you evaluate an employee’s present competencies, as well as determine the possible gaps in capabilities that have to be addressed through a series of training sessions. A skills audit can be done through an interview with the employee, making them answer a survey, or asking them to make a list of their roles and accomplishments in the past recent years.

Skills audit can be done, not just by an organisation’s HR, but also on your own. Regularly doing this will help surface the set of skills that you have acquired for the past months or years. More so, you will be able to get a measure of what you can still improve on, especially if you are thinking of elevating your profession or whether you are still on the right track in your career.

How to do your personal skills audit?

Taking note of both your technical and soft skills will form part of your skills audit. Evaluating yourself objectively, looking closely at what you do even outside your work and in your personal life, can embody your personal skills. You should not undermine any of your skills!

You can ask yourself the following questions for you to start your skills audit and evaluation:

●    What is your current role, as well as your responsibilities?

●    Are you fully able to do your official job description? What are the skills needed for it?

●    Is there a part of your required job description that you are not able to do right now because you don’t have the skills for it?

●    When you were in school, which courses or programs did you take? Which extracurricular activities or clubs did you join in?

●    In your past jobs, what were your roles and responsibilities? Which projects did you accomplish?

●    In our personal life outside work, what are your interests or hobbies? What skills are needed for these interests or pastimes of yours?

●    In evaluating these skills, which ones do you enjoy doing? Which ones do you think you’d need to develop more?

●    Which skills do you think you lack in your job or interests? Which training courses do you think you should take?

●    Which technical and soft skills training courses would you be interested to learn?

●    Which type of other activities would pique your interest, such as volunteering or ministry work?

Master your capabilities and address your skills gaps

By looking at your current skills, how you presently use them, and those that you think you lack, you can start planning on how to address your skills gaps. You should also continue to sharpen your talents and capabilities. You can begin to search for professional training courses that support life-long learning, especially aligning with your career track. These professional courses are designed to develop your skills depending on the level you are currently in.

Set goals as you progress and elevate in developing your skills. You can use the ‘SMART’ method: design your goals in such a way that these are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. This will make achieving your targets easy to pin down and reach.

There are a lot of training portals nowadays that can help you in your skills advancements. Invest in yourself by taking these valuable learning courses. These are organised and styled that can guide you through on the recommended learning program for you.

Conducting your personal skills audit will effectively help you to recognise your strengths and weaknesses and working with these will ensure your professional growth and advancement.

Send MRS V a message if you’d like to know more about how to improve yourself today.