A career counsellor will not make a career or educational decision for you, but they can help you identify an industry/sector or profession that you might be suited to, based on your competences. In addition, a counsellor can provide you with information about the job market and the situation in specific industries, as well as the competences required in different sectors and professions.
The decision about which job offers to respond to or where you apply is, of course, up to you.
Yes. We develop competences in various life situations, not only at school and at work. The audit is based on a comprehensive diagnosis of what you know and are able to do, regardless of how you acquired these competences. If you have no professional experience or higher education diploma, the skills audit can help you become aware of the competences you already have and which ones you need to develop in order to pursue a particular profession.
The time needed for a skills audit is highly individual and depends on several factors: your goal, your stage of educational and professional development, how often you can meet with the counsellor, and how much time you devote to your own work.
The audit is a process spread out over time. It usually requires approximately 2–7 meetings with a career counsellor and preparation for the tasks assigned by the counsellor.
All these elements will be discussed during the first meeting in order to estimate how long the entire process will take in your case.
The skills audit consists of meetings with a counsellor and independent work at home. The time between meetings will be spent on reflection and tasks assigned by the counsellor (e.g., filling out a form, writing down your strengths, searching for information about a particular profession).
In order for a career counsellor to support you in identifying and naming your competences, finding evidence, and then creating a development plan, you need to put some work into the process.
Competences are the ability to perform tasks and solve problems. To put it simply, we refer to competences as everything you know and are able to do, and everything you learn throughout your life, both at school, at work, and through various experiences (e.g., renovating your home, helping your neighbour send e-mails to her grandchildren, or playing on an amateur sports team).
For the purposes of the Skills Audit Method, we divide competences into: knowledge (e.g., knowledge of the law or the rules of grammar), skills (what you are able to do – e.g., preparing a wall before painting or making a chart in PowerPoint), and social competences – these relate to attitudes and relationships with others (e.g., giving feedback or resolving conflicts). Of course, this is a simplified division, for example, we know that knowledge is often necessary to be able to do something.
The division into types of competences is not the most important thing – what is important is to use precise language when writing down what you know and can do. A career counsellor will help you with this.
These are interpersonal competences (used in relationships with others, e.g., “is ready to work in a team”, “is ready to resolve conflicts”) and personal competences (affecting the way you perform tasks, the attitudes you present, and how you perform tasks at work, e.g., “works under time pressure”).
Examples of social competences include verbal and non-verbal communication, empathy, self-presentation, assertiveness, providing feedback (including rewarding), and knowledge about the rules of social life.
Completing a skills audit is not necessary to prepare a CV, but it can make the task less daunting. A counsellor will help you identify your competences, name them appropriately, organise them, and help you find the evidence to confirm them. This will make creating your CV much easier.
Of course, you can use the support of a career counsellor or coach to prepare your CV without going through the skills audit – it all depends on what you already know about yourself and your competences. You can discuss your expectations during your first meeting with the counsellor.
We learn throughout our lives, in various situations, not only at work. Whether you studied at a vocational or general secondary school has an impact on your competences. The same applies to whether you have been a volunteer or cared for elderly for many years.
The skills audit is based on a comprehensive diagnosis of what you know and are able to do, regardless of how you acquired these competences. By looking back at your life, you can discover your potential or experiences that you have forgotten, which may be useful in the skills audit process.
Of course, this does not mean that you have to tell the counsellor everything – you have the right to privacy.
Some competences may seem obvious to you because you have always had them. However, what comes easily to you is not the same for everyone. There are also skills that you had to learn over many years, while others learned them at home or seem to have been born with them.
We often do not realise how many competences we use every day at work, and they are not always specialist competences, e.g., technical ones. When taking stock of your competences, it is worth looking at your potential from a distance and creating a full list of what you can do. You never know which competences may prove useful when changing industries or looking for a better-paying job. Knowing yourself and having evidence to confirm your competences will then be very helpful!
The results of the skills audit belong to you, and only you decide what to do with them – including whether to show them to anyone (e.g., a potential employer).
Also, remember the principles of the audit – voluntariness (you only tell the counsellor what you want) and confidentiality (the counsellor does not share the information you provide with anyone; it is only used to better understand you and your potential).
A CV and a portfolio are two different things. A CV is most often a short list of jobs and schools, prepared for the purpose of applying for a specific job position. In turn, a portfolio is a collection of evidence confirming your competences (all of them or those needed to obtain a specific job or qualification). In some industries (e.g., programming, architecture, photography, website design), a portfolio is essential – it allows the employer to check what a job candidate can do. A well-compiled portfolio can also make it easier to create a convincing CV and prepare for a job interview.
Yes, but it should be noted that a portfolio is created for a specific recruitment process. This is especially true in fields where employers want to make sure that the candidate actually has experience, and not just a university degree or training certificate. Then it will be appropriate to show relevant evidence, e.g., samples of work, photos, or recordings.
Examples of evidence of competences:
No, it depends on the purpose for which you are creating your portfolio. It is worth considering how you can prove your individual competences. It will not always be material evidence (a diploma or photos of your work). The key is to answer the questions: “How do I know that I have this competence? How can I show it to someone else?” If the list is very long, you can focus on the most important competences or group them and look for evidence for thematic groups of competences.
Of course! But it is important to ensure that the evidence is carefully selected and actually shows what you know and can do. If you assign one piece of evidence to the entire list of competences (e.g., a university diploma), it is difficult to determine whether it actually confirms that you have these competences. In this case, it may be better to look for additional evidence, for example, an article written for the university newspaper, a course syllabus, an assignment you completed for a course, a recording of a presentation at a scientific conference, references from a supervisor).
Yes, but before you add countless pieces of evidence to your portfolio, it is worth considering whether they are up to date and relevant (actually confirming the competence in question). Sometimes one piece of evidence is enough, but it needs to be well-chosen – actually prove that you have the competence in question.
When working on your portfolio, it is worth considering what evidence you have to confirm your competences. The form of the portfolio is secondary – it is important that it is convenient for you. At the same time, creating a portfolio is an opportunity to organise the evidence you have accumulated over the years, which we often keep in various folders, etc. If most of the evidence you have is in the form of paper documents, diplomas, etc., collect them in one folder and organise them.
However, we encourage you to make scans – if you lose the paper versions, you will have a backup, and moreover, the electronic version is easier to send, for example, to a future employer.
You can always store digital versions of documents on your home computer. But it’s worth having a backup copy. You can use a cloud drive for this purpose (e.g., Dropbox, Google Drive). An additional advantage of this solution is that you have access to your files wherever you are.
You can also use the online My Portfolio tool, which is designed to create portfolios in electronic form. But if you don’t want to upload your documents to it, you can simply enter the names of the evidence for each competence and keep the evidence itself wherever you want.
No. The skills audit process is voluntary, and the counsellor’s task is to support you in achieving your planned goal. However, a development plan is an important stage of the skills audit. It allows you to think about what you need to achieve your goal, what steps you need to take, and how long it will take. A good plan is like a map that will show you how to reach your desired goal.
It is a specific direction in which you want to develop and is related to work or education. It could be, for example, finding a job in a specific position/level, moving to a different industry, obtaining qualifications, starting your own business, etc. A career counsellor will help you formulate your goal so that it is achievable, and then you will plan how to get there.
A development plan is used to determine, step-by-step, what needs to be done to achieve your goal. To achieve it, we use the competences we already have, but often we need to develop them further or acquire completely new ones (e.g., required for the job position we would like to get). In working with a counsellor to prepare a development plan, you will determine which competences you should develop (and how to do it) to achieve your goal.