One of the hardest challenges for women returning to the workforce or making a career change is determining what they are good at.
Here are several tips to help you get started:
List Your Accomplishments
Write down past accomplishments both in your professional life, your personal life, and for any volunteer roles. What stands out on this list? What is still interesting and relevant? Was there anything that made you feel great about the work you were doing?
Take a Test
Our clients often start their journey with strengths tests and assessments. Strengths Finders has a great free option that can highlight important skills and strengths and the High5 assessment is one that really drills down on your personal strengths.
Try Something New
Sometimes finding what it is that you are good at means being brave enough to attempt something brand new. Make a list of hobbies or activities of interest. Perhaps one of your greatest strengths will appear from this exercise. A great way to do this is through strategic volunteering. For example, if event planning is something that seems interesting, find a non-profit that needs an events chair and go for it. You can also apply your skill-set to non-profit work with Catchafire. Applying something you love in a new environment could spark new interest.
Identify Natural Talents
Devote time to improving and refining the strengths you already have. A great way to do this is to understand what comes naturally to you. Reflect on life events, social settings, or previous work functions where you effortlessly handled a situation without any difficulty. Maybe it was smoothing over a conflict or finding additional funding or project managing a big team collaboration. This will be different for every person but can be a great indicator of what you do remarkably well.
Finding something you are passionate about is key in making a successful return to work—don’t skip this important step.
Looking for more help? Check out our coaching kits to get the tailored help you need and sign up for our future webinar events.
Sign Up for Our Newsletter
