What do you have to offer?

Recognising your skills and being clear about what you have to offer helps you make decisions about what type of work suits you, and to demonstrate your suitability to potential employers.  Strengths are the skills you have that you actively enjoy using and are naturally good at. 

Throughout your degree you will have developed lots of skills. Now is a good time to think about what you have done during your time at University and how your skills have developed. When thinking about your education it can be useful to think about the following:   

• What skills did you use to plan and complete your dissertation? Examples may include innovation and creativity, organisation and planning, analytical and problem solving, verbal and written communication.   

• Have you developed specific technical skills over the course of your degree?   

• What problems have you overcome and what challenges have you faced? These will provide you with evidence that you have skills such as problem solving, persistence, and overcoming obstacles to achieve goals.   

• Have you developed skills in working with others, communicating, working to deadlines, managing conflicting priorities? 

Skills developed through other activities   

Don’t discount any of your experiences beyond study - everything counts. Work undertaken since graduating, part-time work, caring responsibilities, volunteering, societies, interests, internships, previous careers in a different industry, international experiences or travel, personal experiences – they will all have built the skills that you have now as a graduate.  

This analysis of graduate skills will help you understand skills, how to develop them and how to demonstrate them. When you are considering them, think about all the scenarios in which you have developed them. 

TARGETjobs - Skills and Competencies 

Use the Strengths Assessment to reflect on your skills and identify any areas you would like to further develop.  

Strengths Assessment   (University of Edinburgh login required - If you are experiencing difficulty with logging in please contact careers@ed.ac.uk)