Evaluate your skills between jobs

As someone who has changed careers about six different times, one of the things that I wish I would’ve learned early in my career was how important it is to take the opportunity to reflect on what skills I acquired from my last job and how I can continue to benefit and maximize those skills going forward.

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/mynameisreeves/2021/06/06/evaluate-your-skills-between-jobs

Think about the number of times you’ve actually change jobs and ask yourself how willing are you to just dump everything you learn from your old job and just reimburse yourself into your new one? If you’re like most people who have changed jobs, you probably did not give yourself much time in between leaving your old job and transitioning into your new job. If you were like me, you probably timed it so that they would be no break in your pay and no break in your work schedule. In other words you would quit on Friday, start your new job on Monday.

But when you left your old job, have you stopped to take stock of all the things you did in your old job? Did you do a thorough and comprehensive evaluation of everything you learned at your old job? 

So many times you are in such a rush to get away from your old job and start a new job. We often forget that we acquired a substantial amount of skills that can either be used for your new job or even to enhance your life personally in other capacities.  

Think about it for a second. 

When you stop your old job, that is the best time to update your résumé because everything you’ve done at your old job is still fresh in your mind. But even when you do that, how many times have we found ourselves in a position where we have overlooked all the little things that we’ve done in our old job because we just did those things for the benefit of the organization but never stopped us to consider how they could benefit us personally?  

A big reason is probably because you probably were not compensated for all the little things that you did because there was an expectation at your job that you were going to just do those things naturally. When I started it was that ‘5% other’ we used to joke about that you would see on a job applications.    

I’m stressing this because as we move from job to job and career to career, never take for granted that you acquired skills that you can still use even if you don’t use them for your new employer. If you don’t have any contractual obligation preventing you from using certain skills that you acquired at your last job, why are you not evaluating how you could use that to benefit yourself even if it does not contribute to what you do with your current job? 

As one professional said, the most valuable asset every individual has is their labor.   So if you don’t value the labor that you’ve acquired, how can you expect anyone else to do the same?