Employable & Enjoyable Skills Breakdown

I've decided to make the most of my career break by really pinning down what I want to do with my life and so I've been selectively reading portions of "What Color is Your Parachute: 2007," specifically the chapter on finding your dream job. In this "dream job" chapter there are several activities that allow you to break down all the things you are looking for in a job.

In the search for my employable action items I sat down and did the first activity that the author entitles "Who Am I?" However, I found that to be a little vague, I'd think of this activity as more of a Employable & Enjoyable Skills Breakdown. This test is really asking you to identify the skills that you are good at and like to do in your life and then choose to focus your career around them. So after I completed the WCIYP activity, I went back and flushed it out with some additional things that I think make the activity more relevant to helping me define some employable action items.

Start the E&E Skills Breakdown...right here:

STEP 1: Take 10 post-its and on each one write down a role that you play or have played in your life. Just pick the first 10 roles that come to mind. By the end you might be picking out really obscure roles and that works too. I got pretty desperate at the end but I actually found them to be just as, if not more insightful.


Now don't scroll down until you are ready because I don't want mine to sway your choices...


Here's mine:

 

In case you can't make this picture out here are the roles I chose:

Mother, Wife, Woman, Daughter, Blogger, Teacher, Home-owner, American citizen, Dog-owner, Shopper.

*See, I told you they can be obscure.
*Also, just a note because you might be able to tell I did this twice, you don't need to number or rank them, I'd actually recommend you don't. 

STEP 2: Once all 10 are completed, lay them out and write at least two things you enjoy doing in that specific role.  If you can't come up with two for each, that's fine, and if some roles need more things, load them up. Just make sure by the end you have about 20 things written, and it's more than ok if you write the same thing twice. These things you like to do can be vague or they can be very specific. Be creative with what you write and make sure it is WHAT YOU ENJOY!

Here's mine:

 

and last but not least...

 STEP 3: Now take a sheet of paper and write down all of the things that you had listed more than once or that have some sort of common theme. For example, I combined "voting," "making product choices," and "picking out gifts" into decision making. I also combined things to create tasks I enjoy, like: "trying new activities," "being efficient," and "organizing," became "trying new things to be more efficient and effective."

 

In the long run, these tasks are things that you can use to identify your dream job. For our purposes, I'm just going to use them to identify some good employable action items to keep me busy right now.

Sincerely,

Jordan 

P.S. - I would love to hear what you think about this activity. Feel free to share your results through comments, email, or tweet me @employablemom #EESkillsBreakdown