Careers Network

Become your Personal Best

Workplace Skills

All roles you ever apply for in your career journey, from part time work, to placements and  graduate opportunities, will all be looking to assess the following criteria:

  • Motivation: Do you want to do the job/role?
  • Skills, Knowledge and Experience: Can you do the job/role well?
  • Attributes: Do you fit it in to the organisation’s way of thinking/doing things?

It is important that you consider the answers to these questions prior to making any applications to give you the best chances when applying for the role.

The four strands below are key skills and behaviours needed in the workplace that are important to develop during your time at Loughborough and beyond.

Managing myself and influencing others

Have an awareness of workload: ensure you clarify and are aware of what is required or expected of you including the scope and parameters of the task(s) or project(s) as well as who else needs to be included and when the work needs to be completed by.

Know how to set goals, plan effectively and meet deadlines. This eases stress, keeps you on track, helps you to meet deadlines and achieve goals more readily. Please see the goal setting and planning element for more resources on how to do this.

When you are in a professional level role, you maybe not always be told or instructed on what you need to do. You may need to influence and prompt senior colleagues or managers to enable you to carry out certain tasks and move projects forward. The ability to do this professionally, without letting your own emotions cloud your judgement or actions, is the ability to ‘manage up’ effectively.

It is always worth considering the following points when managing up:

  1. Have an insight into what is happening at a senior or business level within the organisation and consider what impact this may be having on senior colleagues, managers and you.
  2. Always keep your end goal in mind for the work you are doing and try not to let your own emotions get in the way.
  3. Learn how to hone your skills regarding how to influence and prompt senior managers professionally and with tact. See the resources on Personal Best for videos and articles on ‘Managing up’.

Problem Solving

All roles will include an element of managing and resolving problems. A good skill to have is to learn how to identify the problem using an empirical approach, through collecting/analysing and evaluating evidence and the impact the problem has on the end user/customer/organisation. Consider a variety of options and approaches when developing your solution. Thinking ‘outside of the box’ and creating innovative solutions is a good skill to develop

Career Direction

There are number of useful tools you can use to planning your career. This simple model called 'DOTS' is a good place to start.

New DOTS model image

For more information on career planning, please go to our 'Explore Options' page.