For quite some time, many professionals have learned to explain their careers through duties.
Managed a caseload.
Completed assessments.
Maintained documentation.
Coordinated services.
Trained new employees.
Responded to client needs.
There is nothing wrong with any of those things. They tell us what you were responsible for.
But they don’t tell us everything that responsibility required from you.
Managing a caseload may have required you to prioritize competing needs, make decisions with incomplete information, recognize when something needed immediate attention, coordinate with multiple people, and keep work moving when circumstances changed.
Training a coworker may have required you to explain processes clearly, answer questions, identify where someone was struggling, adjust your approach, and help another person become more confident in their work.
Those are capabilities.
And when you have done the same type of work for years, it can become natural to describe it by the duties because those are the easiest things to name.
The problem is that other opportunities may not use the same duties.
They may be looking for someone who can evaluate information, coordinate across teams, interpret requirements, identify problems, communicate clearly, improve processes, or make sound decisions.
You may already have examples of doing those things.
They are simply sitting inside experience you have been describing differently.
This is why looking at a list of your responsibilities is only the beginning.
Your responsibilities tell us what you did.
Your capabilities help us understand what that experience has prepared you to do next.
Take the next step
If you’ve done the work but have trouble seeing everything your experience says about you, I created What Your Experience Really Says to help you do exactly that.
The $27 guide walks you through your experience differently so you can move beyond duties, uncover the skills and capabilities within your work, and begin seeing what else your experience may prepare you to do.
You’ve done the work. Now it’s time to clearly see what it says.
You're not unqualified. You're MISTRANSLATED.
To landing what you've earned,
Kourtney Checots
Career Strategist
Founder, MISTRANSLATED