On Career Competencies

Young people embarking on careers are often left to their own devices to figure out how to best navigate the challenges, opportunities and choices ahead of them.

Like with everything else in life, success partly depends on happenstance but it is primarily related to a set of career related competencies and the presence or absence of perseverance and grit. It includes self- management abilities or behaviors that apply across the board and are not necessarily context specific.

I've attempted to categorise these as follows

(1) work-related competencies

(2) career motivations

(3) work exploration (search for contexts where competencies are needed)

(4) career control (planning and self-promotion)

(5) networking (building and maintaining career-relevant contacts)

(6) creative problem solving and communicating with people (be they colleagues or clients)

More on life and career skills in future posts, but it is useful to list a broader set of life skills that heavily determine success:

• Thinking skills: our brain's logical faculty that includes analytical ability, thinking creatively and critically, and ways to apply these towards problem-solving.

• Social skills: these tend to be "soft" skills that include empathy and interpersonal skills, communication skills, management skills, and advocacy skills

• Emotional skills: knowing oneself and ability to cope with one's feelings/emotions, as well as the ability to self– manage (including ways to deal with stress).

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