Transitioning from College to Career
Top Ten Tips for Using CliftonStrengths in Your First Year on the Job
- Know your strengths – Take the time to understand your strengths and reflect on how each strength shows in your behavior, work, and interactions.
- Align them with role requirements – See how your strengths align with the expectations and responsibilities in your role. Look for opportunities to apply your strengths in your tasks and projects that are critical to success.
- Communicate effectively – Implement your strengths in communication with management, team members, and colleagues. Help them understand your strengths so they understand how you can contribute to goals and projects within your organization.
- Build relationships – Within your organization, you can use your strengths to build relationships with colleagues. No matter what your strengths are focusing on understanding other perspectives and collaborating.
- Seek development opportunities – Identify opportunities to develop and work on your strengths. This can include but is not limited to mentoring, workshops, or working on challenging projects that help you leverage your strengths in a new way.
- Set clear goals – Use your strengths to set clear and new goals for yourself. Whether it’s to meet deadlines, or to plan more effectively, use your strengths to make these goals more attainable.
- Adapt and innovate – Change is inevitable. In the workplace, change happens more often than not. Use your strengths to adapt to changing circumstances and innovate solutions to the challenges you might face.
- Collaborate effectively – In your organization, use your strengths to leverage collaborating effectively with others. Understanding and appreciating your teammates strengths and finding ways to complement each other makes for optimal collaboration.
- Seek feedback regularly – Strengths are constantly changing and evolving. Seeking regular feedback on how others see your strengths work and how you can improve them is essential.
- Stay authentic – Above all, stay true to yourself and your strengths. Authenticity in using your strengths will not only help you enhance your position but foster a unique and positive environment.