How Do You Know What You Are Good At?

As a worker, knowing your skills and talents will help you excel by seeking out and performing in a role that fits your strengths. Knowing yourself requires more than a general sense of intuition about your abilities – it also takes rigorous assessment.

The following steps can help you identify what you have to offer.

Find out what drives you

A majority of millennials say purpose is a priority in their career. This is important to know in assessing, because where there is passion, the drive to succeed, learn and improve follows. Ask yourself what you would do if a paycheck wasn’t on the line. Nurture this curiosity and desire to explore new things, which translates into Learnability, and continual improvement.

Identify what’s not working

On the opposite spectrum, you should identify what you don’t like doing at work, or even if you hate your job. This is likely to be correlated with poor performance. Is the problem to do with your tasks and responsibilities? Or is your low job satisfaction more to do with a difficult boss or coworker? If the problem is your duties, try taking a career assessment questionnaire or seeking out the help of a career consultant. These can help you identify roles in other industries that you may not have considered. If the problem is your boss, you may solve the issue by transitioning to to another department or into another role within the organization.

Seek outside perspective

You may feel like you know yourself better than anyone else, but you’re not necessarily the most objective evaluator of your own skills. Instead, you can view yourself through the eyes of an employer by hiring a professional skills or personality assessment and leverage the results to identify your strengths. Similarly, you can find a career coach to help you better understand your value to employers. Finally, ask your boss, a co-worker, or trusted friend to provide you with feedback.

In the end, knowing where you excel – and where you fall short – requires a blend of both introspection and external help and input. Knowing where your true talent lies will help nurture and grow where you have the most potential, and where you can thrive right now.