Career Advice

Map your competencies

 

What are your strong suits? A step by step guide to determining your strongest competencies
You will likely have considered your personal competencies at uni, when looking for a job - or when talking to one of IDA's career counsellors. 
 
Your skills and competencies are your goods for sale in the job market.
 
Often, one's competencies are taken for granted and even left out in job applications. 
 
But by spending a little time on reflection, you can map out your personal competencies and find out which tasks you enjoy the most. 
 
If you have not already mapped out your competencies, it might be a good idea to get started. If you are looking for a job, you have time to go into the process in depth. 
 
And if you have a job, then do it anyways - that way you'll know which selling points to highlight the next time you apply for a new position. 
If you are not sure what your competencies are or what line of business you should target to further you career, you can try using IDA's Competency Profile to map your competencies.

The three types of competencies

We distinguish between personal, social and professional competencies. The professional ones are most important when writing applications.

Professional competencies covers the specialist knowledge you have from your studies and job in a STEM industry.

Personal competencies can be curiosity and creativity.

Social competencies include collaborative skills, presentation skills and coordination skills. But you wont land a job interview because you think creatively, but because of the skills you are able to solve.

You get called to interviews because you represent a professional skillset of value to the company. That is why your focus needs to be on your professional competencies. 

We know from experience that those are the ones IDA members often forget to put on the table.

If you're a graduate member of IDA, our career consultants can give you feedback of you are looking for a job or looking to work strategically with your competencies in your current one.

We often include your competency profile in our career counselling sessions - either as preparation or to determine the next step in your professional development.

You can either fill out the competency profile, which will help you put your competencies into words, or try the competency coach (In Danish).

Try IDA's competency profile

You can use the competency profile as a gross list to pick and choose from when you target your CV for the specific job. 
 
You can also use the competency profile as your own clarification tool – which jobs and what tasks on the gross list has given you the most job satisfaction? In which situations do you perform optimally?

Other useful tools:

Learn more

Get tips on how to write good CVs and applications.