9 ways to discover your talents and strengths

The more talents, skills, qualifications and experience you can offer an employer, the more successful you are likely to be in the graduate job market. This section focuses on your talents and other positive attributes. Most people are not fully aware of their talents and strengths, yet these are key assets. Here are seven tips to help you to identify the full range of your talents and strengths:

1. Feedback.

Ask other people who know you well, particularly your family and friends. Rather than just make a general request that can easily drift into a rudderless conversation, it is best to be specific about what you want with a question, such as ‘I’m trying to develop my CV and I’d be grateful if you could help me by giving me feedback on 5 talents, and/or other strengths that you see in me.’

2. Start with your weaknesses.

Identify your weaknesses, and then look for the strength behind each one. For example, ‘stubbornness’ suggests that you may also have ‘determination and tenacity’. ‘Impetuous’ indicates that you can be ‘proactive’, and so on. In the right context, each weakness can be a strength.

3. Follow on with your achievements.

Identify your achievement and then explore each achievement for the talents and strengths on which the accomplishment depended. You can use questions such as, What talents/strengths do I have that made that possible? What talents/ strengths contributed to that level of outcome? What talents/strengths made me want to accomplish that? We are not talking about earth-shattering achievements here, like climbing Mount Everest. We are simply looking for any time in your life when you did something which made you feel good and gave you a sense of a accomplishment. Note that the point of reference is yourself, not other people. It doesn’t matter whether or not it impressed other people, only whether it pleased you.

4. Reverse chronological scan.

Divide your life into segments of 4 equal parts and then, (1) identify your main activities in each of those years, starting with the most recent 5 years, then (2) identify any achievements associated with those activities, then (3) explore which of your talents/strengths contributed to those achievements possible

5. Variation on chronological can:

You could use ‘places you have lived’ instead of time-periods if that makes most sense to you.

6. Focus your search.

Partition your experience into particular domains to structure your search for talents/strengths. It can be much easier to identify your talents/strengths if you can narrow the search down to specific domains. For example, you could look for talents/strengths in the domains of ‘people’, ‘information/ideas’ and ‘things’. Then you can ask, (1) which of my talents/ strengths are mostly to do with people? (2) which of are my talents/strengths are mostly to do with ideas or information? (3) which of are my talents/strengths are mostly to do with things?

Here are some more ways of partitioning your experience into different domains to focus your search:

a) Work, leisure and learning

b) Body, intellect and spirit

c) Doing, being and having

d) Self and others (What are my strengths in dealing with myself?

What are my strengths in dealing with others or dealing with the outside world more generally?)

7. On-line questionnaires. There are some helpful on-line questionnaires designed to help you identify your talents and strengths. Here are couple of examples of on-line questionnaires that you can Google: (1) Strengthfinder 2.0, and (2) VIA signature strengths questionnaire.

8. Use checklists of talents/strengths.

You can find partial lists of talents/strengths in books on job-finding, career-management and career-life planning. They are only partial because they naturally focus on attributes that convey advantage in finding employment, and also because a full list of all possible talents/strengths is arguably unlimited!

9. Start by asking yourself ‘what do I like doing?’

This can be a good starting place because most of us like doing the things we are good at, and we tend to get better at the things we like doing. So looking at things you like doing can give you clues about what you are good at for any talents, skills, aptitudes or strengths you use in so doing. Also, if the purpose of this exercise is to find employment, then the question, ‘what do I like doing?’, is a sensible place to start.