07

Valuing Your Abilities

A lot of us - and we often think of this as “an Irish thing” - struggle to talk about what we’re good at . Many of us are not particularly great at taking or seeking praise, either . The selfesteem of LGBTQ+ people is estimated at lower levels than the general population; stemming from discrimination and minority stress which begins at an early age . Aifric Ní Chríodáin from ShoutOut shares how it takes work to undo these setbacks and appreciate our own value .

Understanding your own skills helps you to ‘sell’ yourself as a candidate, and listing these skills makes it a little easier for you to complete job applications by matching your abilities to a role description and passing on applications which don’t fit .

You may currently be in a position where you are changing career entirely, or seeking a new role in the same field . Take a moment to reflect on your experience so far . What did you enjoy about your last job? What made you uncomfortable, or was negative, about your experience? Can you easily identify things you did or did not enjoy about the work, the conditions, or the culture in your last company?

Consider making a list of your values and priorities in line with these reflections, and a list of what you might want to avoid in your next job . A decent work-life balance and established working hours might be important to you . Unfortunately, these are not a given, so this should be made a priority to consider when researching or discussing company culture during an interview . You might be particularly keen to have a clear management structure, and opportunities for mentorship and advancement . Look for companies who also consider this important, and openly outline this in their materials . You will likely expect that your employer is LGBTQ+ inclusive and diverse, but how are their diversity and inclusion policies implemented? You may seek employers who offer LGBTQ+ staff networks, volunteering opportunities, and education on LGBTQ+ inclusion- all best practice . At a minimum, you deserve a guarantee that your status as an LGBTQ+ person will be respected and that you will be offered the same opportunities as your straight or cisgender peers . A good employer will clearly provide the same protections and support to all groups protected under Irish equality legislation, including, but not limited to, people of colour, Travellers, and people with disabilities .

Before undertaking an onerous application or proceeding to the interview stage, research the company on their own channels and on websites such as Glassdoor . Reach out to anyone you know who may have worked there to hear it from the horse’s mouth, and decide whether the company’s values match your own .

Asking Others for their Input

If you have a good relationship with former colleagues or classmates, reach out to them and ask for their thoughts on how you might describe your skills and qualities . Explain that you’re putting together a CV or applying for a new role, and ask if they can help you list some skills based on your work together .

Take solace in knowing all that you have achieved, and will achieve, in terms of your own personal priorities.

This is a handy ideas exercise, giving you a starting point to think about what you do well - for example, if a colleague described you as calm, you might contextualise that as being able to keep a cool head under pressure . If others considered you patient, that means you probably work quite well in a team, as you’re willing to give your time and energy to support your colleagues . This exercise will also set you up for the common interview/application question of “how would your former colleagues describe you?”, and can also provide a welcome confidence boost . Others often see us in a more positive light than we see ourselves!

Volunteering / College Experience

If you haven’t gathered much professional experience, or if your work experience doesn’t seem relevant to the roles you’re now applying for, it’s worth looking back on any volunteer work or study which called upon your skills . In post-primary and further education, most of us will have been asked at many points to deliver presentations: doing so engaged communication skills, public speaking skills, and processing and formatting information .

Volunteer work, hobbies, and participation in clubs will all have engaged a range of abilities, depending on the nature of the work undertaken . Think about your activities and achievements in your voluntary experience, and consider in particular what was challenging or vital in your role - were you managing volunteers or coaching younger participants? Did you interact with the public or carry out fundraising activities? Many of these skills are highly transferable, particularly for roles in sales and support which continue in many sectors even during the pandemic . For example, at ShoutOut, our incredible volunteers engage a number of skills to deliver educational workshops in schools across the island of Ireland . They must have excellent communication skills and be confident in public speaking in order to present to students daily . They need to engage critical thinking, memorisation, and storytelling in order to present the material and respond to student questions, and must be adept in facilitating discussions and resolving conflicts to guide the highly interactive workshops .

Senior volunteers often take on a mentorship role in helping new facilitators learn the ropes, and all volunteers learn to lead and supervise students in a classroom setting . Volunteers must be highly organised and have strong time management to get all of the material covered in 60 minutes . Sometimes things go wrong; a co-facilitator doesn’t show up, a car breaks down, our volunteers work as a team and think on their feet in order to make sure the workshop happens . Since making our workshops virtual, our volunteers have mastered the tech of the moment and the occasional hiccups that come with them: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, whatever you’re having yourself .

Some of the valuable qualities our volunteers hold in addition to all of these skills include patience, empathy, understanding, dedication, integrity and confidence . These are all vital in their work volunteering to promote LGBTQ+ inclusion and to end homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools .

In interviews and cover letters, try to shape a narrative around how you developed your skills . Describe what your work brought to a voluntary organisation, how it furthered your study and understanding, and how you overcame obstacles in order to achieve your goals . Creating this narrative paints a picture for employers and helps them to better understand where you might fit in the team .

Developing and Presenting your Skills

It’s absolutely okay to just be ‘getting by’ this year . Whether that means using your free time to bash out as many job applications as possible or simply trying to take care of yourself dayto-day, it’s completely acceptable to not use lockdown to go on a big self-improvement rush . Surviving and staying home to protect others is an achievement in itself .

If you do have the capacity to take on training to improve your professional capabilities this year, review which skills you have identified so far and where there may be room for improvement . Have you been claiming proficiency in Excel all this time, when in reality you basically just know how to make lists with it? Us too . Now might be time to take a free course so you can really impress people with some colourcoding and functions when you’re back on the spreadsheets .

If you’re working in a creative field, or looking for roles in marketing or communications, there are many opportunities to increase your proficiency in programmes and digital tools . YouTube is the place to go for tutorials in programmes such as Photoshop, HubSpot, Wordpress, and others . Do your research: look into the tools you’ll be expected to use in your chosen field . Sites like Coursera offer a wealth of free online courses on a range of subjects - seek out something that interests you and matches your career goals and it will bolster your CV for years to come . There are plenty of ways to present these skills and achievements outside traditional formats . Depending on the nature of your work, you might create a professional website, a creative portfolio, or assemble a collection of writing samples . Link to these in your CV or cover letter and you’ll stand out that bit more . Social media can be useful here . We tend to focus on how our social media profiles can come across negatively to employers and less on how they can be deployed to display our achievements, interests, and expertise . In some roles your Twitter, Instagram, or Medium can be as useful as your Linkedin: bear this in mind and consider setting up professional profiles on a range of social media sites .

The process of applying for jobs asks us to list our skills, talents, and experience in a clinical, mechanical way . It can be exhausting, and demotivating, to be asked to scrutinise ourselves for what can seem like endless job applications . All of this is heightened by the pandemic; fewer jobs are available, and you may be pushed into a different field as a result of business closures or staff reductions . Add to this the anxiety of living through “strange and unprecedented times”, isolation from our friends and families, and lack of access to community spaces, and the result is more pressure than ever on jobseekers .

Hopefully, the process of reflecting on your skills and talents can be a positive one, one which helps you realise that your many achievements can be quantified and put on paper . We hope you can take solace in knowing all that you have achieved, and will achieve, in terms of your own personal priorities . Personal worth can never be measured in jobs and salaries alone; but there’s still so much pride to be taken in what you have learned and the obstacles you have overcome in your life .