Identify Three Things That You Could Do This Year to Enhance Your Employability and Build Skills

Personality, skills and values assessment

Identify three things that you could do this year to enhance your employability and build skills

1. What do I want to do
   Firstly, by taking serious consideration about what it is I want to spend the rest of my life doing. This year more than ever before it has become clear to me that different careers benefit from different personalities and skills and that it will help me in the long-run if I start gaining experience that’s relevant in the career I want to pursue now. When considering it is important I ask myself am I a good fit? Finding something that you feel passionate about early and beginning to enhance the skills needed for that career is often overlooked as a way to enhance employability at interview time.
   
2. Tidy up my digital footprint
   With many employers now adopting a policy of internet and Google searches of potential employees, you need to be confident that a search of your name doesn’t turn up anything that could harm your chances of employment in your dream job. Popular social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook give you the option to set your privacy settings to a level where only your friends can see anything you post or even a friend’s post of you. Even a simple change to your name can throw of the search. Ensuring that outsiders can’t see any of your social media exploits is easy so why not do it. I have started by changing my name on Facebook using my first and middle names and jut went ahead and deleted my twitter profile, and while I was at it I decided to try using the internet and social media to my advantage, by networking. I started building a network of contacts on LinkedIn, joining groups relevant to the career I want to pursue. I have connected with People within these groups and just by following them it gave me more of an idea of what skills I will need to develop as per point 1.
   
3. Joining some student societies
   Over the years in NUI Galway, I never really joined any societies or clubs, not actively anyways. Whereas I know that actively participating in these clubs and societies isn’t a huge benefit to gaining employment or will they be reflecting in your academic qualifications, I feel it’s a way of building valuable skills such as teamwork and strong communication and collaboration. For example, this year I feel joining and becoming an active member of the Bizsoc will help me develop skills that will be appealing to employers and even in an interview situation, if I was asked to give an example of a time I used a certain skill, it would give me a chance to show a time these skills were used.

On reflection of my personality, values and skills, I would describe myself as charming, friendly and fore the most part I try to live in the moment. I am a very realistic person and usually will spend longer looking for the easiest and most efficient way of doing something rather than actually doing it. I mostly enjoy logical problems that have a goal and a clear start and finish. I would regard this as one of my strengths as I am easily motivated when the right information is given to me and there is a finish line to get to. One of my strongest skills would be  my communication and my ability to collaborate with others in groups or teams. A career where teamwork is crucial would be very important for me as I feel I can get other people to have the same eye on the finish line as myself and become part of a productive team. Having sat down to really evaluate my skills and personality and with the use of the myers-briggs personality indicator I have determined that an ESTP personality in one that fits me best. Having determined this, I then looked at a career in marketing.  I wanted  to determine what skills I would need to continue to enhance to make a career in marketing one for me. Marketing can be fun with a range of different experiences while also being goal driven. Collaboration would be a huge part of any marketing team to achieve immediate results. I feel that the skills needed for marketing can be easily improved throughout the year for me.