Throughout the course of your degree you will have likely developed and demonstrated many of the top skills employers are looking for in employees today. You may have acquired or used these skills through working on group projects, conducting experiments in the lab, or writing research reports.

Use this worksheet to help you identify and record more examples of the top skills employers are looking for, and how you are developing these skills in your degree.

As noted at the beginning of this section, your skills can come from many sources. There are also many ways to determine your unique skillset:

• Mining your achievements from various life experiences (e.g., paid/unpaid work, extracurriculars, academics, etc.), paying attention to skills that recur and suggest a pattern: your skills led you to these accomplishments!
• SkillScan - An interactive tool used to identify existing transferable skills; online or card sort versions available through Centre for Career Development front desk

Explore the helpful resources below to assist you in further identifying and articulating the skills you are developing and using in your degree.

• Career Cruising - discover skills required for a variety of occupations
• Access Career Cruising
• Username: uwaterloo
• Password: crc
• Type Focus - tool to help you connect skills to occupations
• Access Type Focus
• The first time you will need to register as a new user.
• Password: uw74
• Select your own username and password.
• When you return be sure to login as a returning user.
• Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario
• Skills
• Government of Canada
• Statistics Canada - Labour market information and more
• Job Bank - Explore careers by skills and knowledge
• Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada
• Canadian Occupational Projection System (COPS)
• Ontario WorkInfoNet
• Access Ontario WorkInfoNet

If you would like further support in determining your skillset, book a Career Development appointment through the Centre for Career Development website

There are many ways to develop skills that will help you in your career decision making as well as your job search. Before we focus on how your degree program is already helping you develop key employability skills, here are a few suggestions for other idea sources:

• Online SkillScan Report offers a number of suggestions for skills identified through the assessment as needing development
• Read definitions of skills found on many websites (e.g., https://www.onetonline.org/skills/ as well as the NACE and Employability Skills 2000+ sites listed above). By understanding what contributes to a skill, you can begin to generate ideas for developing it
• And then…there’s your degree program!