Work search strategies

Identify your accomplishments

Examining past accomplishments is another way of identifying your personal, functional and functional skills—the skills you have to offer an employer. Listing your accomplishments also helps you to build self-confidence, tackle your work search and handle behavioral job interview questions. In other words, by recording your past accomplishments and identifying your skills, you'll be prepared when asked during a job interview to provide specific examples where you applied or demonstrated a particular skills.

On a separate sheet of paper, make a list of 5 to 10 accomplishments. You can draw this list from past work or volunteer experiences, involvement in community groups or organizations, co-curricular activities or involvement with sports teams—it doesn't matter. What's important in choosing which accomplishments to include is that each one made you feel good at the time.

Consider these examples:

• Completed an undergraduate degree
• Participated in a community theater production
• Developed and implemented a volunteer training program
• Played recreational softball for five years
• Led a travel group through a tour of southern France
• Helped organize a charity auction
  

Look again at your brief list of accomplishments. Choose three and try to add detail as in the examples above. Describe what you achieved, any barriers you had to overcome, any special skills (e.g., functional, transferable, or personal*) you used, and those things from which you drew motivation.

* These links will each open in a new window, in which you'll see our worksheets. These worksheets are in PDF format. You'll need Adobe® Reader® to download and print them.

Completed an undergraduate degree

What I accomplished/what I learned:

• Handed in assignments on time
• Handled multiple projects simultaneously
• Participated in group discussions
• Delivered presentations
• Managed my time effectively

Helped organize a charity fundraiser

What I accomplished/what I learned:

• Took direction from various people
• Projected confidence and a positive attitude
• Worked with others toward a common goal
• Identified needs and worked with others to set goals
• Handled money
• Analyzed and projected costs/profits/losses
• Prepared budget and financial reports
• Participated in meetings and group discussions
• Reconciled statements; bookkeeping
• Assisted with public relations; met with the public

Developed and implemented a volunteer training program

What I accomlished/what I learned:

• Identified needs and set goals
• Evaluated methods, strategies, processes
• Identified alternatives and proposed innovative solutions
• Anticipated future needs/problems before they arose/changed
• Recruited, screened, interviewed new volunteers
• Trained/taught others
• Supervised others
• Facilitated group discussions
• Appropriately gave and receive positive/negative feedback
• Followed up with others to evaluate result

If you wish, you can use our worksheet to help you with this exercise. (This is a PDF file; you'll need Adobe® Reader® to download and print it.)