Strengths and skills

According to an agreement between parties in the labour market, the employer is obliged to complete the hiring of the employee in writing if they are hired for a period longer than one month. Such an agreement is usually called an employment contract.

The employment contract must include a job title and a short job description.
Job description is a description of the work role, responsibilities, skills, employment terms and working environment. If you put together a job description, it will be clearer, for you, your supervisor and co-workers what you do and what is expected of you.

What can you use the job description for?

Your work will become more visible, which increases the likelihood that it will be valued more.
You can get to know what your supervisor expects of you. What is it that you do? And what is expected of you?

• You can use it as a preparation for an employment interview with your supervisor.
• You can use it to plan targeted continuous learning and development based on the job description.
• You can use it in wage negotiations.
• You can use it as a starting point when looking for a new job.

How do you put your job description into words?
There are several ways to put your job description into words.

1. Keep a journal of your workday
   You can keep a journal of your workday for a while and then try to summarise how your time is usually divided. This way, you can find out if you are happy with the division of tasks or if you have other requests that you want to make to your supervisor. If you find organising conferences, meetings and events exciting, and you would like to spend more of your time doing that, you may want to use the employee interview as an opportunity to tell your supervisor that you are interested in more projects like that.
2. Divide your projects into percentages
   You can also divide the projects into a percentage of the workday to get a better overview of individual tasks and their scope. You can use this to explain to co-workers and supervisors what you do and thus make your work more visible. Then you can set boundaries or request a different assignment of tasks, if you need to, because now others have a better understanding of your position. If you would like to have more independent tasks, such as working with project management statistics and financial frameworks, then you must explain that you are not able to perform all the usual service tasks such as answering telephone calls and scheduling meetings concurrently.
3. Take your job description further
   Get a meeting with your supervisor. Go through the job description together. This makes the work visible and gives you and your supervisor the opportunity to discuss your field of work and come to a common understanding about it. If you can see from the job description that you are not satisfied with how your time is spent, you should discuss it with your supervisor, perhaps in an employee interview, so that you can discuss how it would be possible to change the time management and thereby the job.

You can use the job description as a basis for a wage discussion, if you can see, for example, that you have taken on much more responsibility and many more projects.

A competence description is a description of the professional and personal skills you have acquired through education, the different jobs you have held over the years and with the experiences and challenges you have faced.

Professional competence are skills that you have acquired through education or through work and work experience.

Personal competence are skills that relate to you as a person and that you carry with you, no matter what job you do.

What can you use the competence description for?

• You can use it to find out what it is you know and what skills you are using at work. What skills are invisible but should be highlighted?
• You can better understand whether you have skills that match your job description or whether you need continuous learning.
• You can use this overview of your skills in a wage interview.
• You can use it to talk to your supervisor about how your skills are best utilised in your work.
• You are better prepared for a job application or a job interview
• Your self-confidence can be enhanced by having a clear overview of the diverse skills you possess.
• You can use it as a basis for a job interview when you want to communicate in which areas you want to grow more. And what you would like to get more recognition for.

How do you put your competence description into words?
When making a competence description, it’s a very good idea to divide it into professional and personal skills:

Make a list of your professional skills
Start by writing down the skills you have acquired through basic education, continuous education, courses, conferences and experience. You have also adopted various skills in your daily work.

Describe your personal skills
It can be harder to put personal skills into words, but it is no less important. You can make a draft and show it to your co-workers. They can probably give you ideas to write down even more examples of personal skills that you had no idea about. Think about a real situation at work where your personal skills were revealed and write it down. You can also create headings like “responsibility” and “flexibility” and work further with those concepts.

Take your competence description further
Talk to your supervisor about the skills that you know you possess. Do they know what you’re good at? Can you develop and change your job together so that you can use as many of your talents as possible?
You can use this overview of your skills as a basis in a wage interview.
Compare your competence description and your job description. If you lack the skills to solve the tasks described in the job description, you can create a plan for how you want to start continuous learning and increase your skills.

If your skills are not being utilised well enough in your current job, you may want to consider changing jobs. Now you can use the competency description to make a targeted and accurate application since you are better at wording the information.