Before you can market your amazing skills to employers, you have to be able to articulate them clearly and weave them into a persuasive and memorable narrative. Use the tips below to consider how you will share your marketable skills in your cover letter, on your LinkedIn profile, during an interview, or while networking.
Identify Your Skills/Interest
Use the self-assessment tools below to identify your natural strengths and capacities. Once identified, you can start building your professional brand.
- FOCUS2 online- identify your natural strengths by taking a personality preference self-assessment.
- PathwayU- take assessments to gain insights on your interests, values, personality, and workplace preferences. It aims to help you find a career with purpose and meaning and offers resources like detailed career matches, occupational exploration, a job and internship board, and work preparation tools.
Career Values
- Career Values Self-Inventory, examine your career values, and then add meaning to your responses.
- Culture 500- search for and compare companies using these nine markers to determine if they would be a good match with your values.
- Attributes new graduates seek in an employing organization/job, NACE 2024
Skills
- Skills inventory- Determine your current strengths.
- Skills Matcher- Rate yourself on 40 key workplace skills to be connected with a list of career titles.
- Career Readiness Competencies- Access yourself for the most in-demand competencies.
Interests
- O*NET® career exploration includes an ability and interest profiler.
- CareerShip matches interest area with potential job titles to explore.
- Interest Assessment is a 30-minute assessment that connects responses to job options.
Use these tools to craft a compelling story to support your internship/job search or application to graduate school.
Professional Competencies for a Career-Ready Workforce, NACE
According to the NACE Job Outlook Survey 2023, employers shared:
When considering the eight career readiness competencies, employers rate communication (4.49) and critical thinking (4.46) most important. In addition, only two competencies—career and self-development (3.81) and leadership (3.65)—fall below 4 (very important) on a 1-to-5 importance scale.
Unfortunately, all employers’ proficiency ratings of recent graduates fall below 4 (very proficient) on a 1-to-5 point proficiency scale. However, graduates’ ratings in technology (3.98), equity and inclusion (3.97), and teamwork (3.84) are closest, receiving the highest proficiency ratings from employers.
When comparing importance to proficiency ratings of recent college graduates, large gaps are evident in the top two competencies that employers rate most important (communication and critical thinking). Additionally, another large gap appears in the professionalism competency, with 91.2% of employers rating it very or extremely important and just 48.6% rating graduates as very or extremely proficient in it. Technology is the only competency for which employers rated recent college graduates higher in proficiency (76.8% of respondents) than they rated the importance of the competency (74% of respondents).
- Read more about these professional competencies.
- Faculty, explore ways to connect these to your courses.
BSOS Majors: Skills & Competencies
- African American and Africana Studies
- Criminology & Criminal Justice
- Economics
- Geographical Sciences
- Government & Politics
- Psychology
- Sociology
Market Your Professional Brand
- Create your “go-to” introduction to be used during interviews or while networking
- How to Look Better on Zoom and Other Video Conferencing Tips, by Vault
- What to Wear to Appear More ‘Trustworthy’ and ‘Authentic’ in Zoom Meetings, by Vault
- How to Choose Colors for Your Brand Identity (and Why It Matters)
- How to Pitch Your Value in Interviews
- Your Personal Brand Workbook, pwc
- Professional attire examples and affordable clothing options, determine what is appropriate for your next professional opportunity.
Use this tracking sheet to organize your accomplishments. This information will be helpful for crafting your resume and speaking about the experience in job interviews later on.
EPortfolio: Offers UMD students the opportunity to highlight skills, experiences, and learning through a set of curated works in an online platform, Portfolium
Creating a LinkedIn profile resources
Building a strong professional presence online
One Button Studio: Students may use the One Button Studio, located in Tydings 0103, to record video resumes, class presentation videos, etc. A One Button Studio (OBS) is a simplified recording studio that gives users the ability to create a high-quality video recording without any previous video production experience. UMD’s One Button Studios provide everything needed to create a polished video project.
Protect Your Image
According to a recent survey, 92 percent of employers conduct background screening on applicants.
BSOS Career Exploration Toolkit
A guide to reflect on your own career values, exploring career interests, and develop a plan to gain experience.
