Forget being a unicorn. Build a magical career with the skills you already have.
What is a unicorn? Here is just one description…
UX Unicorn: Mythical user experience designer with an advanced and adaptive skill range. Outstanding skills in graphic design, rapid prototyping, front end development, user testing, technical specifications, marketing and branding. It does not have an opinion, it has a process, and will harmonize with any environment.
Being awesome at everything sounds great, but it’s not realistic.
Let’s face it… we are all trying to do our best but we can’t be great at everything all the time. The good news is: we don’t have to be.
What we often forget about is being true to ourselves. Being authentic. Being real about ALL of our skills… and also the things that we don’t really draw strength from.
Hard Skills vs. Soft Skills
Hard Skills: technical knowledge or training gained through any life experience, including in your career or education.
When we think about our professional life, it’s easy to focus only on the hard skills: degrees or certificates we have received, coding languages we know, the types of research we can conduct, maybe our typing WPM, etc.
Hard skills are easy to quantify, teachable abilities. Soft skills are personal, subjective, and difficult to measure.
Soft Skills: personal habits and traits that shape how you work, on your own and with others.
Soft skills really encompass the tools that you will need to do your job successfully: time management, empathy, creativity, adaptability, decision-making, etc. It is your unique combination of soft skills that will make you stand out from others and can help you propel your career. When applying for jobs, hard skills will likely be the first criteria you will need to meet. But your soft skills will differentiate you from other applicants. They add personality and can easily demonstrate what type of employee you will be. By promoting both types of skills, you will present yourself in a more well-rounded way.
Hard skills will get you hired. Soft skills will make you successful.
Identify your strengths
The skills you need for your “dream” job are ones that you already have.
It’s important to really hone in on your strengths so that you can grow them, promote them, and use them to your advantage in your career.
But first, it’s important to know what they are.
Self-reflection
Think back to those little moments where you really got passionate about something and you were hyper-focused. When you felt proud and accomplished when the moment was over. Where do you find the most fulfillment professionally? Were you most excited to make the poster or do the presentation for your 5th-grade science fair? Think deep and be honest with yourself.
Ask Your Colleagues
Your colleagues often see sides of you that you aren’t even aware of yourself. Conduct frequent peer reviews. Ask for their honesty and get an outside perspective on the skills you are already contributing at work.
Ask Your Grandma (or other trusted person in your life)
She might be a bit biased, but she undoubtedly has a long list.
Strengths Test
There are easy tests out there that are actually creepily accurate at identifying your strengths (and weaknesses). These have been essential in defining my own strengths. My personal favorite is the Gallup Strengths Finder but there are lots of others (like 16 Personalities and Enneagram). These tests will not only help you identify what your strengths are, but they will also better help you understand how your unique personality fits in with other personality types. You can get more insight into ways that your personality plays in different situations. You will probably read through and say, “yep, that’s exactly how I am!”
Build your career
Re-phrase Your Strengths
It’s important for us to present our strengths in a positive light so that others can better understand how we can help THEM. What do your skills actually mean for the team?
Personal examples:
Love organizing files and folders = create streamlined efficiencies
Over-commit to projects = overly ambitious
People pleaser = go above & beyond for those I work with
Empathy was my #1 Gallup strength = empathy expert
Be Your Own Advocate
You are the biggest champion of your career. The people around you can definitely support you and help you navigate, but only you can ensure that you are on the right path, you are happy, and you are using your skills to their capacity.
Being true to yourself leads to more
productive and valuable work.
Share your strengths with the people you work with, especially your manager. When you want something to happen, you can manifest it. Tell your manager that you want to start working on building a specific skill… all of a sudden, those types of opportunities will be brought to you.
Personal example: I have an uncanny skill at organizing and remembering where things are located. I have thus been coined the “Team Librarian” because I know where all the things are. I take pride in pointing my teammates in the right direction and enabling them to get back to their work faster without spending hours digging through files on Box. Hint: being a “go-to” person is great for job security.
Map Your Goals Back to Your Strengths
One of the best things you can do for your career is to set some goals for yourself and identify how you need to grow your skills in order to meet those goals. This will help you stretch, and allow others to see your progress in a measurable way.
Personal example: I set a goal for myself to do some public speaking and become more involved within the UX community. My manager and I made turned it into a SMART goal. I started by reading some public speaking books and getting some more practice in wherever I could (presenting in meetings, giving talks at church). I found a topic that I was passionate about (this exact topic 😉) and then reached out to my local Ladies That UX group and sent a speaking proposal. I teamed up with one of my previous co-workers and we gave an awesome talk at Adobe. Now I am continuing to stretch myself by doing more speaking and writing, and my manager is able to offer support, encouragement, and share my progress with the larger team.
Let Your Light Shine
You are human. Give yourself a little grace. There are things that really strengthen you, and also things that do the complete opposite: they are draining, and you don’t find joy doing them. Those things that might better fit for someone else to take on (except time sheets, everyone really must do those yet they will ever spark true joy).
This is what makes a great team — when everyone can contribute their unique skills to the greater good. (More on this later…)
Now go take 10 minutes and write down all of your strengths. How can you foster these strengths and build upon them? How can you harness them for the benefit of your team? How can you set goals and tie them back into your strengths? How can you let them shine when interacting with others?
// Katie
