TFN#42: 🪜Skill Cards: How to truly assess your skills and plan career path

Every time, in my resume, when I had to choose what to write about my strengths, I used to feel claustrophobic. I felt as if I had just a handful of words that I knew, and beyond that…there was a dead end.

Now imagine, what would happen when managers and their team members might be meeting once a year to discuss where they need improvement?

I guess a complete disaster!

Because it is so difficult to name the skills that apply to a knowledge worker. And in a conversation such as appraisal, if you can’t name something, it doesn’t exist.

My obsession with self-appraisal

If you have come across my appraisal of appraisals article, you’d already be knowing my contentions with the entire appraisal process and my suggested solution: self-appraisal.

During the same time when I had written “Appraisal of appraisals”, I had come across skill cards. They’re free soft copies of cards that you can use for self-appraisal. If you have a supportive manager or guide, even you can invite them to participate as well.

100+ Skill Cards

These beautiful skill cards were developed by mobile.de and were made public for everyone’s use on the Miro tool. (That’s a beautiful free tool on which I create most of the illustrations you see in my letters) Look at some of the card samples here:

How to access these cards?

All you need to do to access these cards is create an account on Miro if you don’t have one. And then head to this link: https://miro.com/miroverse/skill-cards/ And hit “Use Template” That’s it.

Self-appraisal using skill cards

Though all instructions are provided in Miro’s skill cardboard, you can skip all the nitty-gritty and focus on only three things:

Non-focus cards: sort out any cards that are irrelevant to your work

Good enough cards: the skills that are good enough for your current or future work

To improve cards: the skills that you need to work on to reach your future career path

Make it more interesting

As mentioned earlier, you can invite your manager or guide on Miro and ask them to sort the cards in these buckets for you. What do they think about your skills?

This would provide you with a better, personalized review of where you stand.

Like the idea? Hit Reply tell me or share with me about how you used the skill cards. Or even better, tell me if any other technique works for you.

Reads of the week:

We are aware of how difficult it is to get independent research funded in this increasingly ideology-driven world. Because money guides the agenda. It makes the best of the minds to kneel and accept somebody else’s biases.

In such an academically stagnated world, this just two-year-old institute serves as a beacon of hope. Possibly, the last land for a free and fair scientific inquiry. Curiosity. Exploration. And real Impact.

So, when I learned about Arc Institute and its administrative setup, I couldn’t help but share it with you. Interested in learning more? Read their about page.