Understanding Your Strengths Through Skill Stacking

As part of my professional growth, I’ve gotten involved with the SHRM-Atlanta community as a volunteer member of the Rising Leaders group. This HR Young Professionals group provides an exclusive opportunity for members to network with peers, gain relevant and timely information about the HR profession, and get connected with SHRM-Atlanta leaders.

As part of a recent meeting, I was asked to co-lead a session around skill stacking. To be perfectly honest, before helping organize this conversation, I had only heard about the concept and didn’t really think about how it directly spoke to me and my career path so I set off to research and learn more.

If you’re like I was and only vaguely familiar with the idea, the main premise is that we all have skills that we are good at that we leverage throughout different opportunities. You’re not experts at all of them but your unique mix of skill sets is what sets you apart from others and often raises your value add to a team or organization.

Blog Post: Why You Need to Start Skill Stacking

Visualizing a Skill Stack

I determined that if I was going talk with others about skill stacks, I needed to jot down my own.

With a traditional stacking concept, I saw visual examples that conveyed one element building on top of the other. I do believe people typically have one skill that they leverage as a strong base. However, when communicating my skill set visually, I see the interconnected nature of skills.

Here’s what I came up. My larger hexagons reflect skills I leverage for the majority of my roles, projects and interactions while the smaller ones are areas I'm focusing on growing in currently-- all are constantly evolving.

Identify and Grow Your Skill Stack

Start by generating/brainstorming a broad list of the skills you have developed or acquired through your personal and professional experiences. Know that you are working on developing all of them just at different times and in different situations.

Think about all areas of your life 

·        Volunteer positions

·        Leadership roles (personal and professional)

·        Personal roles (as a parent, a friend)

·        Treat this as a living document.

·        Constantly build your skill stack through and make note of the areas where you are challenged to learn new things

Skill Stacking for Professional Development

Skill stacking can happen no matter where you are in your professional career—whether a student of career professional. This process doesn't just focus on items to put on your resume. Ultimately, it helps you clarify and articulate what all you bring to the table in your current role or for future roles.

Those who desire to build on their skills should start now. This generation of students is learning how to code, budget, and use their voices and persuasive skills to drive change. The younger generation will bring increasingly more skills into the workplace and earlier on in their careers, so take advantage of the opportunities you have now to further build your skill stack too!

On my My Skill Stack Horizon

·        Improving two-way feedback

·        More concise communication

·        Data Analytics

·        User Experience

·        Paid Social Media Campaigns

What do you have in your #SkillStack?