It’s honestly hard for me to have a self-assessment of my own skills because I have always felt insecure and inferior about my work history and career in general. I’ve never felt truly validated or appreciated for what I can bring to a workplace. Perhaps it’s because I have just not found the workplace that is actually a good fit for the skills I have. Or perhaps it’s because my skills are actually just not compatible with the kinds of work that are available in the corporate world.
Of course, me being in SCCA at all is a symbol of my optimism that it is the former. I would really, really love if this were the last career switch I attempted. At least for a while. It was honestly super cool to hear Brit open up about her experiences with burnout and leaving jobs in her responses to my questions, because it’s something I relate to a lot, and it tempers my expectations. Maybe it’s not worthwhile for me to expect that this will all end in something that’s forever, and that I just need to believe in my ability to take everything one step at a time, and trust that I’ll course correct when the time is right.
Anyway, I digress. This blog assignment will be a good exercise for me because I really do need practice in identifying what it is I actually do have.
For hard skills, my strongest would have to be:
- Web Design – I worked for a web development coding bootcamp for several years, and I also have experience with this in my undergrad degree, and now finally at SCCA I’m bridging the technical/coding side of that with the design side of things, so I think I’m really solidifying my skills here. I have built web apps from scratch, though none looked very pretty, I thought they were very cool. Now I can make them look good and have a good user experience as well.
- Project Management – I used to be a high school math teacher too, and honestly I could just put that as a hard skill “teaching” but if we’re going by hard skills that could get me a design job, I’d frame it this way, because teaching 6 classes every year, with 4 different preps meant I had to be really good at managing my time and deadlines. I also have project managed in other contexts, like in my other life as a DJ where I have produced several parties which required coordination of many moving parts with a deadline.
- Content Creation and Art Direction – This is the way I’m going to frame the sum of my visual design experience and skills. Mostly because I’m still at the beginning of my design education so I don’t really feel qualified to say that I’m skilled at Adobe software, but it’s definitely coming. And I think I’m skilled at the entire life cycle of content creation in the sense of ideating a piece of media and making it come into existence with whatever tools I am able to employ, or ask/hire someone to help out with it. I have a couple years running a pretty popular instagram account and art store and I have dabbled in graphics/video all my life, though not to the intensity that I am now.
For soft skills, I would say:
- Agreeableness – I’m honestly a fun person to work with. I truly like people, and it’s easy for me to be authentic and see others as whole people outside of their roles at work. It pains me to not be humble about this but since this whole blog assignment is about bragging, I have been beloved by all of my coworkers I have ever had. (as for my bosses, that’s a different story, because on the flip side I really stand up for the little guy. I sometimes have a chip on my shoulder in that regard. I would always go to bat for my students, or direct reports, even if it meant having unsavory relationships with my bosses. So maybe, that’s a soft skill I will want to work on, is being agreeable with my superiors. IDK if I will ever get over it though, I used to be the site rep for my union :/ lol)
- Organization – I have good organizational habits and I like being precise. It really bothers me when things aren’t written down and put in the right place or if process is confusing, so I usually end up taking on the labor of making sure that they are.
- Persuasion/Presentation – I think I’m a pretty good presenter. I have a lot of experience speaking to groups, and that doesn’t intimidate me at all. It’s kind of fun, actually.
Hard skills I’d like to work on:
- Branding – I really really want to get good at this. I love what we learn in Jill’s class and I just have so many questions because it can go so deep. The execution and production of design, I feel like I know I can learn easily, because it just feels straightforward and linear. But the branding aspect, like why you make design choices on behalf of a business and what choices are good ones, is such a fascinating and challenging wormhole for me.
- Motion, photo, and video – I want to develop these skills purely because I think they will really benefit me in my career. I don’t expect to become an expert but I want to feel fluent enough in them so that I can employ them easily for my own design work, or know enough about them to be able to make directorial decisions about who to recruit.
Soft skills I’d like to work on:
- Collaboration – frankly, I am not good at working in groups because I can be really opinionated. I think I can turn people off because of that and I would like to build my skills of being able to tell when I should double down and when I should be open to compromise.
- Agreeableness – I know I put this as a soft skill I’m already good at but I’d like to work on this specifically with my bosses. I want to be able to navigate business politics and do right by my work and the company I will work for, in other words, without compromising my values.