Bus X 410 Business Career Planning Assignment 2 Identifying your top ten functional skills 50 points Instructions and Scoring Matrix The second assignment is to identify your strengths what is it that you do best These are things that employers will pay you to do Please note however as you go through these you should also be thinking about the things you enjoy doing You may discover that you are very good at some things but you really don t want to spend your time doing those things These are not things to build a career search around You are completing this assignment for several reasons When pared down this information should find its way into your resume This is the meat on the bones of your resume Second it should also help you prepare your marketing plan for yourself and respond to questions in an interview These functional skills should include specific behavioral examples or descriptions and not just be a list of ten skills This is why the assignment is worth 50 points There are two things that individuals do not often do relative to this assignment First they are not specific enough Second descriptions tend to be more like character traits like honesty friendly and so forth instead of behaviors Behaviors are things that you do or actions that you take These should be transferable skills that you can use in the work place Stay away from using personal attributes integrity happy Take time to do this assignment and put some real effort into it These behavioral examples as the text notes in Chapter 2 are what will separate you from the crowd You need to have a reservoir of specific stories about how you have done things to illustrate your point You are of course somewhat dependent on having a good interviewer But your goal is to create an opportunity to share some of these specific examples It is much more powerful if you have some specific examples of how you are well organized than if you don t These examples may come from work extra curricular activities or social activities Here is an example One of your top ten skills 1 Strong Interpersonal Skills If this is all you put you will receive a very low score Here is a behavioral example or story I am recognized by others for my ability to relate easily to people As a student events team member I was often in situations where I had to introduce myself to others portray a positive attitude to the public and facilitate new members meeting each other I have the ability to make people feel at ease in these situations I do not need the stories though I love to read them what I need is the behaviors in specific terms as to what this functional skill or competency actually means For example this story might be broken down into things like able to establish rapport with others exhibiting a positive or optimistic attitude facilitating connections between people introducing yourself to others in new situations or whatever it is that you draw out of this An excellent answer would look like this 1 Strong Interpersonal Skills As a student events team member I was often in situations where I had to introduce myself to others portray a positive attitude to the public and facilitate new members meeting each other I have the ability to make people feel at ease in these situations From experiences like this I Easily establish a rapport with others Facilitate connections between people Create comfortable social environments for others Then this will help you with your resume because you should have ten top skills and four to five behaviors of each skill so you will have a wealth of material to draw from You will find yourself stretched a bit to come up with ten the first three or four may be easy How do you come up with these functional skills If you are stuck start by going through the key work experiences you have had or social activities you have been involved with and ask yourself how you spend your time Or go ask someone you think knows you well to suggest what you do better than others Or go look at some job ads to see what kinds of skills employers are looking for and this may spark some ideas But spend some time on this activity because it is the underlying foundation for developing your personal marketing plan One final note I am often asked by students what can I make good money at Here I completely concur with the author of the text It is better to make 20 000 and be happy than 50 000 and be miserable If you concentrate on what you are good at the money will follow in time Below is the scoring matrix I will use for this assignment Category Skills Identified 10 Behavioral Descriptions 30 Marginal One to four skills identified 0 4 Behavioral descriptions are lacking more focus on traits or adjectives 0 15 Acceptable Five to nine skill areas identified 5 9 Most functional skills have behavioral descriptions some skills have limited information about the behaviors 16 24 Completeness and coherence 10 Words spelled wrong document lacks coherence document is disorganized 0 5 Document is somewhat organized some words not spelled correctly 5 7 WLS Spring 2014 Outstanding Ten functional skills identified 10 Each functional skill has a set of behavioral descriptions with it behaviors described give a clear picture as to what the functional skill is 25 30 Document is well organized presented coherently and words are spelled correctly 810