Have you recently had an unsuccessful interview? Or perhaps you are thinking about applying for that new job or summer placement but feel like you are not good enough or don’t have the necessary skills? If so, read this article written by Christian Jameson-Warren, who is a career coach at the University of Nottingham about growth mindset and how to acquire new skills.

Next year, I hit a milestone; I turn 40. There is no escaping it. Inevitably, this has led to plenty of reflection on choices made and lessons learnt – and from this, I can safely say from experience that what psychologists tell us is often very true.

For example, events that happen in our life are generally neutral. In other words, they only mean what we (often unconsciously) decide they mean based on learnt experience. One of the consequences of this is that we often have a ‘self-critic’. You may recognise this as that little voice in your head that often gives us messages that may or may not be helpful, such as ‘you didn’t succeed in the interview, so there’s no point trying for another job, you’re simply not good enough’. As hard as it might seem to believe, this self-critic actually has a positive intention; you experienced a situation that caused you pain (such as an unsuccessful job interview), and so your self-critic is trying to dissuade you from potentially experiencing that pain again. Once we acknowledge this intention, we can start to do something with the message.

If we listen to this message and accept that somehow our attributes and skills are set and can’t be changed that much, we have what’s called a ‘fixed mindset’. On the other hand, if we acknowledge that we can develop our talents, then we have what’s called a ‘growth mindset’. These labels can be attributed to the psychologist Carol Dwerck, who did a lot of research on this topic. Dwerck described the growth mindset as:

“[T]he belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments, everyone can change and grow through application and experience.” 

As part of this, instead of seeing activities you do as either ‘success’ or ‘failure’, it can be helpful to view activities as experiments; either you try something, and it has the outcome you want, or it doesn’t have the outcome you want, and you instead use it as a great learning opportunity for next time.

In addition, recently, I’ve also been studying the concept of high performance. Research shows that performing well in any field is not about having particular personality traits, but by doing the right things consistently. The application of this is that anyone can do well if they are willing to work to develop our skills - regardless of their own perceived strengths and weaknesses.

Two things to consider though before you start working to develop your skills:

1)      Often I’ve seen people (myself included), feel this need to develop their skills as much as possible, and so try taking on too much and focusing on things that actually aren’t going to help their career goals. So before deciding to improve your skills, it is beneficial to think about your career goals and which specific skills you would need to develop to achieve these. If you are unsure where to start, have a look at job adverts for roles you might be interested in doing in the future, and make a list of the common requirements.

2)      A common concern I see from students is that because something isn’t ‘official’ (e.g. paid experience, or a qualification with a certificate), they worry that it won’t be recognised. This is simply not true. Especially at the start of your career, employers are really interested in you as a whole person, and pay more attention to the wide range of activities you may have done to develop your skills as you don’t yet have years of work experience.

There are several ways in which you could develop skills, these are some:

1)     Volunteer for something you’re interested in. It doesn’t have to be directly work-related.  Being involved in something you’re passionate about can benefit your own emotional wellbeing as well. There are a lot of transferable skills that can be developed through volunteering, and it really was key in my own early career.

2)      Take an online course through a provider such as FutureLearn, Coursera, Edx. These are online courses delivered by universities; you can pay for a certificate or do it for free (I do the latter and still add to my CV).

3)      If you’re in the workplace, see if you can find a mentor. Speak to your manager about this. A mentor can help you with achieving your career goals, including sharing ideas of how to develop the needed skills. It may also help to reach out to people who do the type of work you want to do in the future, and ask them for their advice on developing your relevant skills (for example, asking how they achieved it).

4)      Volunteer for relevant projects at work. For example, depending on your workplace there might be opportunities to be involved in a variety of working groups, which is a great way to use skills in the workplace if you feel your current role is otherwise limited in this. In addition, there may be opportunities to do your current work in a way that develops skills you want (I do a lot of this).

5)      Listen to podcasts and watch videos, and then think how you can apply this learning into activities you’re doing so you can put it into practise. This is also something I’ve done a lot of, and personally, I much prefer this to doing formal qualifications which require essays and assessments!

Christian Jameson-Warren

Career Coach at the University of Nottingham 

Regardless of the stage you are in, both in your career/studies and in developing your skills, the important thing is to know you can always improve and get to where you want to be. Look out for more articles on career skills in our upcoming issues. Otherwise, do you have a story about how you developed a certain skill and want to share it with your fellow BPSA members? Fill out this form and we will get in touch with you!