Welcome to the first blog from Diosa Coaching and Not Going to Uni! Over the next few months, we will be exploring the softer side of your job hunt; looking at how to maximise your potential, search for jobs that appeal to every side of your personality and ensuring that you are meeting your needs and desires when looking for your dream job.Today we are going to discuss how to find yourself in a busy world of people telling you to be a certain way – and creating a personal environment that allows all your future decisions to align!What do I mean when I say ‘find yourself’ Finding yourself is a point you get to in your life where you understand yourself fully, your skills, values and beliefs. These 3 elements set the foundation for every decision you need to make in your life. We live in an incredibly dynamic world, with the opportunity to travel, take jobs that may have been out of our scope previously, we can harness the power of social media and we can start our own businesses, working every day on our passions – what a time to be alive!However, we also live in an incredibly toxic environment – where movements towards minority groups in the workplace seem to be at a still shockingly low level, we are constantly hounded by people on the internet over our looks, what we should be doing and people seemingly living the dream on social media.So today – I am going to help you find out what it is you actually love, how to use this information to find your dream job and live out your passions every day.Skills, values and beliefs The focus of my business at Diosa Coaching is identity. I focus on this for many reasons:
Once you know yourself, you can be sure about any decision you need to make
Who doesn’t want to live their life knowing who they are!
It helps you work out what suits you in your life and what definitely doesn’t
It develops an air of confidence
You build better relationships
You can shut out the noise of what everyone else is doing and focus on yourself
Conversations are easier to have about your chosen path as you are making sensible, strong and purposeful decisions about your life
Skills Understanding your skills is going to be an essential part of your job hunting. Employers alongside your qualification are very keen to understand what else you have been doing to develop skills necessary for your role and the company.Take a moment to think about what skills you have within the following categories
Personal skills
e.g. influencing, listening, caring, supporting, training, languages, building relationships, leading
Creative skills
e.g. innovating, inventing, drawing, painting, improving ideas, coming up with solutions, creating new systems and processes
Technical and manual skills
e.g. analytics, adapting, fixing, putting things together, finding solutions to problems, mathematical, physical fitness
Information and data skills
e.g. researching, monitoring, analytics, interpreting data, evaluating, writing, planning, editing, organising, assessing The important thing to think about here is not only what you are good at but also what you enjoy using! Just because we have a skill-set in one particular area, doesn’t mean that we can’t harness our other skills in another area of life/work.If you love a certain skill-set, or have a passion for another skill-set, write them down – these are the things you want to focus on in your job hunting.What else could you think about?To add to this list, think of 3 top achievements in your life – what skills did you use to make a success of what you were doing? These will help you understand what you need to focus on in your job hunt.Values These are the benchmarks we draw on when we come to think about what we determine to be important to us, what qualities we choose to exhibit, the sort of person we want to be and the way we interact with others around us.Such as with our skills, everyone has a unique set of values that they choose to embody. We tend to surround ourselves with people who have similar values. It is going to be important when thinking about your job hunt to ensure you feel passionate not just about the work that you do, but the company that you want to work in.
Think about a few times in your life when you felt you were living your best life.
Who were you with
What were you doing?
Where were you?
What values were you exhibiting and what values were other people showing?
Now think about some low points in your life and answer the same questions
Now think about the following questions:
What values do you believe to be essential to your life?
What values represent how you live your life?
What values are essential when it comes to thinking about your SELF?
Think of someone you admire – what values do they hold that you think are important?
Think of someone you do not admire (in fact go out of your way to ignore) what values do you think they possess that you don’t like?
Once you have an idea of what values are important to you – this will help you work out what you are willing and not willing to compromise on when it comes to your job hunt.Beliefs Beliefs about us and the world around us from the moment we are born. The people who bring us up and the people we are surrounded by help to form these beliefs. Beliefs can range from our spiritual beliefs, how we see the role of family, how you deal with anger, stress and people, to how we see ourselves and the role we play in our life and work.What I want to focus on here is self-limiting beliefs and where they come from as these can really hinder the belief we hold about what jobs are suitable for us.For example – men can’t work in fashion and beauty, or that you can’t choose to be a stay-at-home father to women being told we can’t be engineers, technical experts or focused on work instead of raising a family.I want you to think about any self-limiting beliefs that you hold about yourself and getting the job that you want and ask yourself the following questions:
Why can’t I do that?
Where has this belief come from?
What does it mean if I do something different to what is expected?
What am I expected to be doing?
If I’m doing the job that someone else wishes for me – will I be fulfilled?
What is my dream?
In a future blog we will discuss about how to challenge opinions others have on you and how to reframe the conversations you are having with yourself and others to ensure that you feel you have the confidence to be all that you need to be and do a role that serves you on every level.Jenni is a life and career coach with Diosa Coaching. She has over 10 years of experience working in careers and recruitment.
