The Personal Audit

How do you turn what your feelings about what you are good at, into something employers are interested in reading and hearing about? The answer is to use a Personal Audit. For someone looking for a job, whether it is trying to find employment in a role that you have experience at, or in a job that is new, a personal audit is a good place to start. A personal audit will identify personal features that can help a candidate stand out when applying for a job and allow the potential employer to see how the candidate matches up with the person specification.

How do you start a personal audit?

To write a personal audit does take time and effort, but this work is always worthwhile. Those who carry out a personal audit are often quite surprised by what they discover about thier skills, talent and employability.To complete a personal audit there are a number of different stages or steps.

Step 1. The first task is to list all the jobs you have done. You do not have to be employed to do this—have you helped with a school production, organised an event—all of this type of practical experience will be used in a personal audit.Step 2. Next for each job or activity, list the skills you used or developed whilst doing the job. So if you organised an event, did you buy any supplies, drinks or food—so skills are ordering and payments. Have you dealt with customers—so customer relations and so on. You may

have coached youngsters in a football or rugby team– using skills like leadership, motivation, encouragement, training etc. By using this structure it is quite easy to start describing an effective range of experiences and skills.Step3 Choose your top marketable attributes in each category. Use examples from the notes made to prove your point –if you believe you are creative, prove it with a real world example.Step 4Try to match employment opportunities with your skills; good at figures and handling money—where does this lead? Whay sort of job would these skills make you suitable for? Use your personal audit with careers advisors, show then your skills, and let them point you in the right direction.

Once you have completed a personal audit, you should be able to match your skills to job opportunities. Most job vacancy adverts will give details of tasks and duties involved (from the Job Description), and the sort of person needed to do the job (from the Person Specification). So can you now match your knowledge and skills, which have been made clear through the personal Audit, to what the employer wants. What the applicant now has to do through the application process, is make clear to the employer how their skills, match the employers needs.An good example of a students personal audit can be found at;

http://resources.glos.ac.uk/pdp/pdpstudents/stuactivities/skillsaudit2example.cfm