As we continue through our career we acquire skills and specializations along the way. This is what builds up in an interesting way to form what we generically call “experience”.
How do you capture this experience within a description of the value you could bring to a new position or project? After a few years into a career the list can get pretty long and there are nuances that are hard to capture.
For example, it’s been nearly 20 years since I programmed in assembly language. I’m not a developer, but that experience gives me a good appreciation of what someone in my team would have to go through (if they were unfortunate enough to still be using assembly of course). Ultimately, a static resume can only take you so far. And a textual description is cumbersome to wade through.
Your Skills and Specialization Inventory
The Xuropa Professional Profile offers the solution. Using a self guided tool within the My Profile section you quickly build up your inventory of Skills and Specializations.
Specializations
- Select the field within which you developed the Specialization: Semiconductor, IP, EDA, Software, or System.
- Select the area: Engineering or Business
- Select the domain of your expertise
- Select whether the specialization is still current or not.
Even if a Specialization is not current, it’s important that it’s taken into consideration. A business background built upon engineering experience is very valuable. But no one’s going to ask a sales person to dive in and start writing Verilog.
Skills
The same goes for Skills:
- Choose the domain: ex. “languages and protocols”
- Select the sub-domain: ex. “protocols”
- Check off all of the protocols you have a skill with (or HAD skills with)
- Select the number of years you used that skill for
- Select if the skill is current or not
Now when you view your Skills and Specialization inventory you will see everything that you’ve done or used over the years in a simple table.
You will see that this effects your Community Map considerably as well. All of a sudden you see that different people within the community are now represented as closer to you than before. This tool shows you close associations and can indicate someone that you have a lot in common with and should connect to. They could be someone you should have on your team for the next project!
Thank you Cary Snyder for the inspiration for this post!
Posted under career
