Using skills assessments to define and communicate your personal brand
There are four steps in the personal branding process (according to personal branding expert Dan Schawbel). Discover, create, communicate and maintain.
You discover what you’re good at and how you want to be known. Then you create materials that encompass and highlight those characteristics, and you communicate them to others through networking. Lastly, you maintain your brand through social media monitoring and by maintaining your network.
Optimal Assessment can be very helpful in the discovery and communication stages.
If you’ve never seen it, Optimal Assessment consists of three assessment types: Skills Inventory, Accomplishment Sheet and Proficiency List.
All of the assessments allow you to discuss the intersection of your skills and abilities with your experiences. Each assessment is a grid, with certain skills and abilities listed on one side and life experiences (coursework, internships, jobs, hobbies, etc.) listed on the other.
A Skills Inventory is a basic assessment. You’re provided with more than 100 skills and abilities that are valuable in the workplace. You can identity which ones you possess and fill in details about situations in which you’ve used those abilities.
Both the Accomplishment Sheet and Proficiency List utilize the O*NET database to helps users discern and elaborate on their skills for a particular job.
An Accomplishment Sheet shows you the skills and abilities needed in a certain profession. It’s a tailored list of the skills and abilities found in the Skills Inventory.
A Proficiency List is a very specific assessment that lists the everyday tasks associated with a certain profession. While skills and abilities refer to broader categories, like listening or mathematics, proficiencies are much more specific and action-oriented. For example, a graphic designer needs the ability to think creatively, but must be proficient in the Adobe Creative Suite.
So, how can these assessments help you discover and communicate your brand?
As you’re discovering you’re brand, you’re trying to figure out how you want to be known. A Skills Inventory (if you’re not already established in an industry) or an Accomplishment Sheet (if you have a career path in mind) can help you brainstorm what characteristics you possess and want to highlight, and which are important in a given industry. With that information, you can pick out a few key brand attributes to incorporate into your communications.
When you communicate your brand, you want to incorporate stories from your past to illustrate your brand attributes. By framing the assessments in terms of abilities and experiences, Optimal Assessment helps you think through your past and identify defining moments and experiences that you can incorporate into your brand.
It’s also great preparation for behavioral interviewing. Every experience that you detail could be the answer to one of the “Tell me a time when…” questions.
You can get more information about Optimal Assessment on our website here.
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