What Color Is Your Parachute? (45 page)

Click
here
to view a PDF version of the Transferable Skills Inventory.

3. Write Six Other Stories, and Analyze Them for Transferable Skills
Voilà! You are done with Story #1. However, “one swallow doth not a summer make,” so the fact that you used certain skills in this first story doesn’t tell you much. What you are looking for is
patterns
—transferable skills that keep reappearing in story after story. They keep reappearing because they are your favorites (assuming you chose stories where you were
really
enjoying yourself).

So, now, write Story #2, from any period in your life, analyze it using the keys, etc., etc. And keep this process up, until you have written, and analyzed, seven stories.

4. Patterns and Priorities

When you’ve finished this whole Inventory, for all seven of your accomplishments/achievements/jobs/roles or whatever, you want to look for PATTERNS and PRIORITIES.

a) For Patterns, because it isn’t a matter of whether you used a skill once only, but rather whether you used it again and again. “Once” proves nothing; “again and again” is very convincing.

b) For Priorities (that is, Which Skills Are Most Important to You?), because the job you eventually choose may not be able to use all of your skills. You need to know
what you are willing to trade off, and what you are not.
This requires that you know which skills, or family of skills, are most important to you.

When you are done filling out the Transferable Skills Inventory, it will help you greatly in deciding Patterns and Priorities if you cut or tear out the preceding four pages of the Skills Inventory and spread them all out on a table or on the floor. With these four grid pages side by side you now have a complete view of the boxes you checked, or colored in, as you analyzed your stories. Next, take a red pen or pencil, and read over each skill description where you colored in more than once. As you now read each of these skill descriptions, say to yourself: “Sure, I used this skill in the past. But do I STILL REALLY ENJOY using this skill today?” If your answer is “Yes,” put a red circle around the number in front of that skill. (The numbers are not significant; they’re just “placeholders.”) Next, if, in that particular skill description there are multiple phrases, but one or two of these really grabs you, then underline just that phrase, in red. When you’ve run through all four pages of the skills grid, in this manner, look it all over, choose your top ten favorites from among all the circled ones, and copy these ten on a separate sheet of blank paper. Then prioritize those ten, using the grid on the next page; or if you prefer,
the electronic version described earlier
.

Click
here
to view a PDF version of the Prioritizing Grid for 10 Items or Less.

Then list the top six or ten, in order of priority, on the following diagram.

5. “Flesh Out” Your Favorite Transferable Skills with Your Traits

We discussed traits earlier. In general, traits describe:

How you deal with time, and promptness.

How you deal with people and emotions.

How you deal with authority, and being told what to do at your job.

How you deal with supervision, and being told how to do your job.

How you deal with impulse vs. self-discipline, within yourself.

How you deal with initiative vs. response, within yourself.

How you deal with crises or problems.

Click
here
to view a PDF version of A Checklist of My Strongest Traits.

You need to flesh out your skill-description for each of your six or more favorite skills so that you are able to describe each of your talents or skills with more than just a one-word verb or gerund, like organizing.

Let’s take organizing as our example. You tell us proudly: “I’m good at organizing.” That’s a fine start at defining your skills, but unfortunately it doesn’t yet tell us much. Organizing WHAT? People, as at a party? Nuts and bolts, as on a workbench? Or lots of information, as on a computer? These are three entirely different skills. The one word
organizing
doesn’t tell us which one is yours.

So, please flesh out each of your favorite transferable skills with an object—some kind of Data/Information, or some kind of People, or some kind of Thing, and then add an adverb or adjective, too.

Why adjectives? Well, “I’m good at organizing information painstakingly and logically” and “I’m good at organizing information in a flash, by intuition,” are two entirely different skills. The difference between them is spelled out not in the verb, nor in the object, but in the adjectival or adverbial phrase there at the end. So, expand each definition of your six or more favorite skills, in the fashion I have just described.