Learning how to appropriately advocate for yourself and present your strengths to others is key in finding success after graduation and beyond. So, what are the ways we can target our competencies, adopt a growth mindset, and build our professional profiles without attacking our true potential?
What are Strengths?
A strength, both in and outside of the workplace, is a skill or talent an individual culminates through personal development. Strengths are positive traits that are cultivated by an individual’s thought processes, feelings, and behaviors. Within nearly all job functions, employers are actively seeking an applicant’s capacity to thrive in a specific role. In a workplace, the recognition of employees’ natural abilities can guide the assignment of roles and tasks on a team. This strength-based approach leads to increased performance and individual drive, ultimately resulting in greater success on tasks.
How Do I Discover My Strengths?
Psychologically, human beings have a negativity bias. This tendency causes the human brain to focus more intensely on mistakes, weaknesses, and past traumas. If you’ve ever found yourself replaying the most embarrassing part of your day before falling asleep, it’s largely because humans are wired to react more strongly to negative stimuli. Due to this phenomenon, our decision-making is influenced more by our negative self-perceptions rather than our strengths.
It’s important to recognize the power in shifting our primary focus from our weaknesses, even when it may be difficult at first. Here are some tools and ways we can learn more about our strengths;
Become Career Ready: Skills Employers See – UConn Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills
The UConn Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills targets strengths that are specific to your professional development called career competencies. Students can explore, assess, and develop these eight competencies to better prepare them for opportunities after graduation. The assessments provided on the Focus2 platform analyze data on your interests, skill levels, and values to help you identify a major or career path.
Utilized by students and professionals alike, the CliftonStrengths Assessment aims to conclude individual attributes through a simple formula: Talent x Investment = Strengths. Developed by psychologist Don Clifton, the 30-minute test ranks each recipient’s results based on 34 common attributes of human behavior.
The HIGH5 Strengths Test enables individuals, teams, organizations, and coaches to learn about their natural abilities. The creators of the HIGH5 Test believe that realizing your strengths and motivations will help you achieve more of your professional and personal goals. HIGH5 provides strength and weakness insights and career path suggestions to help apply your results right away.
The Kolbe Assessment measures how individuals take action and solve problems based on their instinctive patterns of thinking. Their highly developed “Action Modes” including Fact Finder, Follow Thru, Quick Start, and Implementor help categorize various strengths and help teams increase positive performance.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
This popular personality test aims to help individuals personally develop by categorizing individuals into 16 distinct categories. Curated by Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers, the MBTI test provides insight into how individuals naturally make decisions and observe the strengths of each category.
How Does this Apply to Students?
For student success, the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills works with the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) to amplify the knowledge of eight core career-readiness competencies/strengths including: Career and Self-Development, Communication, Critical Thinking, Equity & Inclusion, Leadership, Professionalism, Teamwork, and Technology. These competencies reflect the primary abilities that employers look for when adding students or applicants to their respective teams. In other words, competencies are the general, overarching skills students need in order to be successful in the workplace.
Whether you’re exploring or looking to grow, recognizing your strengths is a beneficial practice to integrate into your personal and professional life. At the Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills, we offer various resources that students can utilize to broaden their professional goals. These resources include 1-on-1 appointments with our Career Coaches on 12Twenty, as well as further information on our career competencies on our website at Become Career Ready: Skills Employers See – UConn Center for Career Readiness and Life Skills.
Unlocking your true potential is a large undertaking but an equally rewarding one. While in pursuit of personal and professional development, students may leverage their strengths in their journey to increase their skills and competencies and become career ready.
