How to identify your key strengths to make a career change

Whether you are looking to advance your career or unhappy with your current occupation and seeking to change industries entirely, detecting and leveraging your key strengths is likely the most valuable place to get started.

Strengths are often directly related to motivation and interest in the tasks you perform on a daily basis. When these 3 elements are aligned, individuals tend to thrive in the workplace.

On the contrary, when one or more element is misaligned, frustration, and career stagnation can occur —which leads to everything feeling like an insurmountable chore.

This is the stage at which many job seekers find themselves: dissatisfied with their daily functions at work and not knowing in what direction to go to make a positive change. Identifying your career strengths before changing jobs can put you back on the right track.

How do I find my career strengths?

Paying attention to the way to feel while performing your different tasks at work is a simple way to identify your workplace strengths.

Ask yourself:

• Which aspects of your job provide you with satisfaction and joy?
• Which ones elicit validation and recognition from others?
• Which activities keep you interested and motivated?
• Which are your most desirable activities?

These are likely your key career strengths —and also skills you can outline when editing your CV.

Now that you have identified your workplace strengths, you will need to find a matching framework and process that allows you to maximize their impact.

Fostering your workplace strengths will help you not only enjoy work more but also help you provide your company with higher productivity and better results in less time and with less effort. Feeling in your element at work leads to lower stress levels, more time to spend with your family and loved ones, and ultimately, better health.

Examples of Career Strengths

If you are trying to identify your strengths in the workplace, it may be helpful to go over some examples so you know what, exactly, you’re looking for.

Some individuals have a particularly keen ability for the following areas:

Vision and foresight, in practice, looks like someone who can:

• Think strategically and focus on a long-term destination
• Inspire and establish a positive future in the minds of others
• Conceptualize solutions that can become tangible products or service offerings
• Generate creative ideas and articulate possibilities that others have not considered, or that are not entirely based on experience
• Pioneer new concepts and lines of thought that have not been proven in practice yet
• Brainstorm new strategies and co-create new solutions with others

Design and structure, in practice, looks like someone who can:

• Analyze situations and conceptually break down and understand their elements
• Define clear policies and guidelines that help unify the way groups of employees work
• Set objectives and specific goals to direct work at an individual and company level
• Establish a budget and allocation of resources to achieve company goals
• Create functional performance measures and standard evaluation mechanisms
• Weigh performance objectively
• Make decisions according to quantitative reasoning

Construction and implementation, in practice, looks like someone who can:

• Implement standard processes to get work done effectively, efficiently, and consistently
• Design step-by-step procedures such as instructions or checklists
• Execute projects to achieve significant organizational or physical progress
• Ability to unify and manage different projects
• Implement proven methodologies and practical solutions

Operational and Interpersonal, in practice, looks like someone who can:

• Build relationships and bond with key people on an emotional level
• Work in a team
• Coach others to facilitate their personal growth breakthroughs
• Support others and help them achieve their goals and surmount obstacles
• Relate to people based on commonalities and softening differences
• Communicate to achieve interpersonal understanding and actions
• Change spontaneously to adapt to a dynamic environment

Understanding your strengths and being able to focus on them will help you pave your career trajectory. Now you just need to reign in the fear of a career change.

How to overcome fear inherent to a career change?

Changing jobs —especially when pivoting into a completely new career— can be associated with fear.

Fear of being unemployed for a while, of poverty, of uncertainty, of disappointing others —such as parents or a spouse that has supported you throughout your studies.

Others may feel afraid to lose a certain professional status, or of seemingly losing all the effort they’ve already expended in a career direction that does not satisfy them.

All of these fears can be addressed by focusing on the positive aspects of job satisfaction in your new chosen career, one where you feel aligned, where efforts feel much smaller, easier, where it feels worth it after a long day.

Courage to change careers can also be found in reframing your past career experiences as the acquisition of different skills and abilities that will propel your new career to much higher levels.

How to make a successful career change

Before deciding to make a complete career change, determine whether you simply need to find a new job. If you have found that your strengths are nurtured in your profession but not in the position you’re currently in, perhaps you need to update your CV and look for a new position in the same career.

If this isn’t your case and you are determined to make a complete career change, follow these steps:

1. Use self-assessment tools to evaluate your values, skills, personality, and interests or visit a career counselor
2. Make a list of careers of interest that you would like to explore
3. Look at job offers on your list of careers to explore: Do you have the qualifications? Can you get them? Would you be satisfied with the salary they offer? Are you ok with the time and energy necessary?
4. Narrow down your list of careers based on your answers to the questions above
5. Reach out to people who work in the areas that remain on your list of careers of interest
6. Set goals for yourself regarding how to start working on that new desired career, such as obtaining a degree or certification or developing new skills that may be required
7. Create an action plan and see it through
8. Update and modify your CV and send it out to potential employers

Now that you have identified your strengths to make a career change, and created a CV that gets you interviews, you may want to learn more about how to follow up after a job interview for your dream career.

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