Skills and Capabilities Assessment

During this session we analyse your strengths and weaknesses to assess at what stage you are with your professional career, what your professional areas need improvement and what additional skills you might need to develop. We also analyse the current industry environment with all the existing opportunities and threats. Obtaining the full picture via performing SWOT analysis will help you to look objectively at your existing skills and areas for development in reference to the current industry trends. 

SWOT analysis: 

• Your strengths – your existing skills and capabilities
• Your weaknesses – potential areas for personal development
• Industry opportunities – existing opportunities for career development in the external environment that you could take advantage of
• Industry threats – these are threats to your career development in the external environment that you must be aware of

Strengths

Your strengths set you apart from your peers and are the features that will help influence your future career. 

Examples:

• Relevant work experience
• Strong communicator 
• Public engagement experience, 
• Experience and qualifications in using specific techniques, software packages etc
• Expertise in a particular field/ niche 
• Organisational skills, 
• Your network, 
• Leadership skills, 

Weaknesses

Weaknesses are areas for development within your control. 

A development plan can help you make improvements in areas that will help you to reach your career goals. Insight into weaknesses can also help rule out areas of work for which you may not be suited.

Examples:

• Skills (look at technical, research, general transferable and career management skills).
• Gaps in experience
• Gaps in knowledge
• Personal characteristics (eg. poor motivation).

Opportunities

Opportunities for your career development are positive economic, social, scientific and technological trends impacting on the labour market that provide opportunities for you to exploit. 

These might include:

• Advances or growth in your discipline that provide opportunities to use your specialist research skills
• Opportunities for research funding
• Opportunities for training and development
• Opportunities for advancement or promotion
• Opportunities to collaborate with others in your own or a different discipline
• Opportunities to transfer your research skills to another research area or employment sector
• Opportunities for self-employment
• Networking opportunities

Threats

Threats to your career development are negative external conditions that may inhibit the availability of opportunities. While these are beyond your control, awareness of them allows you to plan to reduce their effect by, for example, developing yourself in preparation for a work area that is thriving. 

Examples include:

• Obsolescence of your specialism as new developments in technology or changes in commercial interest occur
• Competitors – better qualified, more experienced, more skilled, better able to market themselves
• Economic tightening leading to fewer jobs or development resources
• Obstacles, eg. lack of flexible working opportunities, oil crisis
• Deglobalisation leading to geographical redistribution of work away from your current base.

This assessment can help you decide where to focus your career development efforts. It can also help you determine what information you need to support career decisions and give you pointers to areas that you can address in your career development planning.