Table of Contents
Introduction
A big wakeup call after completing the skills assessment reading each category and discovering that there are skills that are already learned along with a roadmap to follow to gain and master the new skills needed for my degree. Filling in the basics along with the interpersonal skills questions had no complication and were rather simple for my evaluation. The areas of technical, resource, and systems is where some great strides will have to be accomplished over the next 24 months. Personal skills assessments like the one completed will be used as a path to accomplish the skills that I need for the career path chosen.
Personal Skill Strengths
Currently I am an in-home design consultant for a bathroom remodeling company out of the Los Angeles area performing a one call close system. The skills that I have mastered over the years have attributed to my success fall under the major category of basic along with interpersonal skills. Active leaning is used daily of having to keep current on new methods, products, and design updates. Critical thinking is constantly exercised due to the ever-changing complexity of being in a customer’s home and having to put objections into logic. Logic is used to show a customer a solution to a simple thing which is always money.
Learning strategies along with math are used in my current career each day, because business is math seasoned with some art of making a sale. The art of speaking is my largest strength, without the ability to speak there would be no current sales career used to accomplish my success. Interpersonal skill used in my current position that attribute as strengths are negotiation, persuasion, service orientation, and social perceptiveness. Software application skills along with systems with some resource are part of my current use in my sales career. Using the iPad-based system is a complex platform that must be mastered before being able to go into a home and work with a customer. In each skill category and sub category there is always room to improve with further education, keeping myself trainable along with coachable.
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Personal Skill Weaknesses
Before this assessment it was a feeling that I possessed all the skills that are necessary to achieve the degree that I have set out to accomplish at DeVry. To my amazement I discovered there are some true weaknesses that I was forced to answer with lowest number, and it is a wake-up call for the future. Technical skills all the way across the category will be my biggest weaknesses even though computer systems along with software applications are a strength in my daily use. Counting nine items as weaknesses in the assessment from installation, operations and control, operation monitoring, operation analysis, programming, quality control, repairing, technology design, and trouble shooting were my true weaknesses of scoring 1.
The weaknesses described are a big scare and created anxiety forcing me to ask if this is the career path that I truly want to choose. It has made a knot of stress causing me to think about what my choices are. I have a fear that these weaknesses could cause me to fall behind and achieve a lower GPA that will not be acceptable to the program I am in funded by the Veterans Administration. These weaknesses do not affect my current career due to my selling ability but will greatly impact the future if there is no plan to learn and master them. The true fear is to fall behind, because having those weaknesses without a plan will greatly affect the future.
Personal Improvement Plan
To personally improve myself for the future to gain the required skill needed for my certificate in Computer Networking Administration I will have to do what is uncomfortable, by making it a normal routine. Uncomfortable means intense reading and taking the required classes, by immersing into subjects that are unknown currently in life. The most difficult hardest step was to enroll in an online program for my education. I have not sat in a college classroom since the fall of 1986. I was able to take forward 18 transferable units to achieve the basic steps of my AA degree with fear I enrolled in DeVry.
My improvement plan is to start out with small steps by taking one class this 2-month semester and fully apply myself with discipline and make failure not an option. My career goal is to be a computer network administrator and my path is to master the skills that I do not know yet that fall under the technical category. After earning my certificate, I will than strive for my bachelor’s degree to fulfil my goal.
Conclusion
I have learned that even at the age of 51 and working in different careers since the age of 15 my attitude assumed that all the skills needed to achieve my degree were present. The self-assessment exercise became an eyeopener showing me that there are both positive strengths and reachable weaknesses that would have to be worked on.
In conclusion the assessment exercise gave me a learning experience that shows how much hard work and time will be needed to take the uncomfortable of going back to school and turning it into a degree.
