Understand Yourself

Increasing self-awareness will boost your confidence in presenting yourself to potential employers, and also allow you to look for roles that are more likely to give you job satisfaction.

Get stuck into the advice below to help figure out your values, assess your strengths and start building all that essential self-awareness!

Understand yourself – sounds like a simple instruction but in practice it’s not always so easy. Luckily, there are many different exercises and concepts available to help with this daunting task. If you’re more of a visual thinker, you might find trying out an Ikigai diagram helpful.

The Japanese concept of Ikigai, translating to ‘The Reason for Being’, has helped many individuals to explore their own definition of meaning in life. The philosophy has captured the interest of the western world and become popular as a way of exploring professional purpose. This can be visualised by the Ikigai diagram, originally developed by mentor and academic Marc Winn in 2014. An adapted version of this diagram appears below:

Curious to give it a go? Draw out the diagram above and then follow these steps to start exploring your professional Ikigai:

1. Take some time reflecting upon what to put in each of the 4 circles and then add the information into the appropriate segment.
2. Examine what you’ve put in each section: do any of these answers overlap with some of the other circles? Put these answers into the relevant intersections.
3. Reflect further – are there any answers which could sit right in the middle, overlapping all of the circles? This would be your Ikigai.

The answers you have in this very middle section should give insight into activities, skills or values you want to look for in potential careers, giving you the best chance of a purposeful and fulfilling professional life.

This is not an easy or straightforward task. It will take time and deep reflection to get closer to determining your Ikigai. It’s an ongoing process, which you will want to come back to as you develop more skills, insights and experiences.

For a deeper insight into the meaning and practice of Ikigai have a look at this website:

The Philosophy of Ikigai, Positive Psychology

What’s important to you? What inspires and drives you? These are your values, your attitude and beliefs about what is important in life.

Values are central to our motivation and also influence how satisfied we are in our work. If your values are well aligned to those of your work environment, you are likely to feel a sense of pride in what you are doing. If, however, your values are at odds with your work environment and those people around you, you may become demotivated. People want different things from their careers and everyone defines ‘success’ in their own way. Reflecting on your values can help you to assess different career options and make decisions.

To identify your own values, ask yourself questions like:

• What is important to me?
• What would a perfect day look like? What values are represented in this choice?
• How do I spend my free time?
• What do I enjoy doing?
• What would I do if there were no limitations?

It can feel surprisingly tricky to answer these questions, but it can be a very helpful and insightful activity so is time well-spent. For more help, a really useful approach is TapRootT’s core value identification system, which helps you identify your 5 most core values. Why not have a go? You’ll find it within our very handy Reflection Toolkit:

Reflection Toolkit

As you get to know yourself better – what strengths you have, what motivates you – you might also start to identify skills gaps and areas for development. Consider the resources below to help you upskill in areas of interest and expertise.

Coursera

LinkedIn Learning is free while you are a UoE student! Use the link to find out how to access.

LinkedIn Learning as UoE Student

For a lot of us, working digitally is a particular area we feel we need development in. Especially within the creative and cultural sectors, as digital media is rising, more and more employers are seeking candidates with strong digital skills. According to a study carried out by Oxford Economics, it is said that ‘the demand for digital skills is expected to grow 3-4 times quicker than employment growth over the next decade’.  Gen Z’s Role in Shaping the Economy goes further into the details of this case study and the expansion of the digital age.

Gen Z’s Role in Shaping the Economy

If you want to develop your digital skills, here are some free training courses for you to explore.

Curious Academy Digital Upskilling

Google Digital Marketing Certificate

Interested in a quick visual summary of some key points? Here’s a comic strip looking at how to upskill.