How to identify your strengths and skill gaps for a change of career

Matching your knowledge to opportunities, and realising what skill gaps you might have that would prevent you from getting the job, is an important step when aiming to change career or job.

Many people are held back and constrained by job titles. They are so conditioned into putting job titles on pedestals that they’re blinded to what the real and most important things are — their own unique strengths.

If you can look at your strengths independently from your job title during a job or career transition, you will not be restrained or as influenced into doing the same job for a different company. The career transition world suddenly opens up and you start to find your way in this increasingly fluid and opportunistic market.

In being honest, job titles are still important in this process. They provide a (generally) universal language for strangers to speak and categorise themselves. In other words, they provide a way for a hiring manager to label what they are looking for.

Make no mistake, the most important part of this is the description of the job rather than the job title. From one company to another, the label of a job title can mean a plethora of different things and it’s the description of the role and internal context that truly defines it.

So, with this in mind, if you’re able to understand the skill set you have and the general area you are interested in, e.g. working for a yoga studio, instead of being restricted and put off by job titles, you can start widening your search, looking at jobs/careers you previously did not consider and start reviewing the strengths they’re looking for, instead of the job title.

Skills associated with certain jobs

The table below is designed to provide a helpful structure and some examples of how to match talents and skills to certain job types. This will, in turn, help you to decide if your own strengths would be a good fit to a certain career.

This exercise is focussed on the type of job rather than the industry. If you want to make a career change, by changing your job AND the industry, then this is really going to illuminate some new pathways for you and help you fully understand what your options are.

If you love your job but just want to change industries, this is still a relevant exercise to help you reconnect to your values and give depth to your understanding of this process.

Note that some talents and skills can overlap from job type to job type. Here we are teaching you a new skill; the skill of being able to understand your own strengths more clearly and to discern what types of strengths and attributes different job types are looking for. With this, you should also experience a boost in confidence because you’re focusing on what you can offer, rather than what you can’t.