SKILLS AUDIT

A skills audit is a review of your existing skills against the skills you need both now and in the future. It can help you to identify your existing skills, identify what skills you may need to carry out your existing voluntary work and role more effectively and to plan, develop and improve the skills and knowledge needed for your future career.

Carrying out a skills audit is a five stage process.

Stage 1 – Existing Skills and Knowledge Identification

First you write down, as a bullet point list, the knowledge and skills which you consider to be important for your current voluntary work. You may find it useful to refer to the section ‘How are skills learnt’ to do this and to refer to your ‘job description’ (if there is one for your voluntary work) and to information within the University’s Careers service.

Stage 2 – Future Skills and Knowledge Identification

Next write down as a bullet point list, the knowledge and skills which you consider to be important for your future career.

Each list should comprise roughly between fifteen to twenty bullet points.

Stage 3 – Rating Your Ability

Once you have produced your lists you need to rate your current ability against each one. This may be done via a 3 point rating of strong, weak and somewhere in-between, or you may find it more useful to use a five point scale such as the one below.

= No current knowledge or skill (no current competency),

= Some awareness but not sufficiently competent to use it,

= Familiar with and able to use the knowledge or skill (some competency),

= Proficient in the knowledge or skill and able to show others how to use it (high level of competency),

= Expert with a high degree of skill and/or comprehensive knowledge (fully competent).

Stage 4 – Review Your Ability Ratings

Next ask a friend or your supervisor, or tutor to review your list and give you feedback. Try to ensure that you choose someone who is honest and not afraid to tell you the truth. There is no point in asking a close friend if they are unwilling to be honest for fear that they may hurt your feelings by telling you that you are possibly not as good at something as you think you are.

Stage 5 – Your Future Development

The final stage is simply that of using the information to concentrate on developing the skill and knowledge areas where you have a low score or have identified that you are not fully competent.

A more advanced method of carrying out a skills audit is to produce three bullet point lists:

Behavioural skills

These are the transferable personal and interpersonal skills which are necessary for almost every career. These are typically the skills of:

Communication, working with and relating to others, problem solving, communication skills, ITC skills, mathematical skills, self management and development, time management, managing tasks, time management, communicating clearly and effectively, applying initiative.

Technical knowledge and skills

These are those which are specific to the particular technical/professional area(s) in which you work. For example: if you are doing voluntary work in a school then there may be specific knowledge you may need in order to work with children, or, if you know that your chosen career will be as a counsellor then you will identify that you need to develop specific counselling skills.

Other knowledge and skills

Those which do not appear on either of the other two lists. They may relate specifically to the area that you do your voluntary work in and may include particular methods and procedures you use or may relate to the position that you occupy and role you carry out.

You may wish to photocopy and use the template overleaf (or print it out) to help you when carrying out your skills audit.

SKILLS AUDIT