Job Interview Tip: Your General Skills Inventory Checklist

Now it’s time for you to take a look at the general skills you possess:

1. Scan the following list of general skills.

2. Make a checkmark next to those skills you have used reasonably well. It’s possible that you have used a skill only once but are still reasonably proficient with it so that you could use it again if you had the chance. Be generous with yourself as you decide whether you have these skills. You need not be an expert in them, nor is it necessary that you have used them in a work environment. Think carefully back to school, recreational, social, or volunteer situations in which you may have used these skills:

___ Advertising

___ Advising

___ Analyzing data

___ Analyzing situations

___ Arranging events

___ Assessing performance

___ Assessing progress

___ Assessing quality

___ Assisting

___ Attending to detail

___ Auditing

___ Building structures

___ Building relationships

___ Building credibility

___ Building cooperation

___ Budgeting

___ Calculating

___ Classifying

___ Client relations

___ Coaching

___ Corresponding

___ Communicating in writing

___ Communicating verbally

___ Communicating nonverbally

___ Communicating feelings

___ Communicating ideas

___ Communicating instructions

___ Conceptualizing

___ Consulting

___ Correcting

___ Counseling

___ Data processing

___ Decision making

___ Decorating

___ Delegating

___ Developing systems

___ Developing designs

___ Developing talent

___ Diagnosing

___ Directing

___ Drafting

___ Drawing

___ Driving

___ Editing

___ Educating

___ Empathizing

___ Enforcing

___ Engineering

___ Evaluating

___ Filing

___ Financial planning

___ Forecasting

___ Formulating

___ Fund raising

___ Healing

___ Helping others

___ Implementing

___ Imagining

___ Influencing

___ Initiating

___ Intuiting

___ Intervening

___ Inventing

___ Investigating

___ Leading people

___ Lecturing

___ Lifting

___ Listening

___ Managing tasks

___ Marketing

___ Marketing and communications

___ Massaging

___ Nurturing

___ Observing

___ Operating computers

___ Organizing

___ Prescribing

___ Program managing

___ Programming computers

___ Project managing

___ Promoting

___ Public speaking

___ Recording

___ Repairing

___ Reconstructing

___ Reporting

___ Researching

___ Sales and marketing

___ Selling

___ Servicing equipment

___ Servicing customers

___ Supervising

___ Surveying

___ Team building

___ Team leading

___ Telephone calling

___ Tending

___ Tooling

___ Training

___ Troubleshooting

___ Understanding

___ Using equipment

___ Using the Internet

Other general skills not mentioned

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3. Now, go back over the list again from beginning to end. This time around, circle those skills that are checked off and that you want to continue to use in your next job.

4. Now you have a list in which some of the skills have both a checkmark and a circle, which means the following:

a. You can use them.

b. You like to use them.

c. You would like to continue to use them in your next job.

5. There is one more step, and this is the most challenging one yet. Pick out six of the skills that you have on your list that are circled and check marked. When it comes to narrowing the number of your skills down to six, it’s likely that you may be thinking, “I’d like to use almost all of these skills. I enjoy using them so much that I hate to narrow the list down to just six.” Think about this for a moment: The last time you bought or leased a car, did you actually consider every single feature the car had—from the axle to the hoses to the spark plugs to the tail lights?

Would you have been enticed to purchase the car if the advertisement or the salesperson had just said “This car has all features” and did nothing to explain specifically what the most important features of the car were?

Wouldn’t it have been more engaging if the advertisement or salesperson had mentioned six or seven special features that you were actually looking for, like air-conditioning, an audio system with six speakers, or a 5-year unconditional factory warranty?

The “special features” on this car are like the selected skills you bring with you to the interview.

By mentioning the “features” you know you have and you know the employer wants, you show the employer that you’re equipped to solve the kinds of problems inherent in the job.