Knowledge, Skills & Abilities (KSA) Identification
By Vivian Carrasco

Identifying your Knowledge, Skills and Abilities (KSAs) is a critical step in clearly communicating your specific qualifications and skills to potential employers and clients. It can also be a powerful source of empowerment and confidence during the inevitable roller coaster of emotions that can accompany a protracted job search.

Military spouses should not define their skills in tidy boxes that match career titles. After all, the salary, description and responsibility for a particular position can vary depending on the employer, and the area of the country in which you live. Frequent relocations can also impact spouse opportunity and employment.

How to Develop a Portfolio of Achievement

• Think of a variety of examples for past achievements.
• Develop those examples into the challenge, your action and the result. This is often called a CAR statement.
• Describe each situation.
• When describing an award or recognition, give specifics behind the act.
• Remember that your education is found primarily in informal formats versus formal classroom environments.

One of the most difficult things to do is supply self-praise for our own accomplishments. Use the following questions as a drill. Complete each response, and share the results with people who will react with positive, yet honest, feedback. Prepare yourself for success by acknowledging your personal KSAs.

A Drill for Your Skills

• What are some qualities or attributes that you admire in other people? Reflect on how you share or aspire to the same kinds of traits.
  
  
• Brainstorm some creative things you have accomplished that gave you a sense of satisfaction. This might be something artistic that you have crafted, performed or produced, an invention or product you have developed, or even articles that you have published.
  
  
• Name a time that you have volunteered to take on an especially challenging role or project. Describe it, and what you learned from it.
  
  
• If a friend, family member or co-worker were to brag about one of your skills, what would they say? Based on your own values, what would you want them to say?
  
  
• Create a list of memberships, special projects and teams in which you are active.
  
  
• Think of a unique challenge in your work or life roles that forced you to go outside of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). What did you do?
  
  
• Pretend that you are creating a dictionary in your career field's language. What are some specific terms, wording, jargon, or vocabulary you would include? Describe your knowledge of each term.
  
  
• Your family, boss, co-workers, and/or colleagues have depended on you for something. For example, they looked to you to fill a role or complete a specific kind of task. What is it?
  
  
• What do you understand or know so well that you often teach it to others? Look to all of the experiences in your life, not only those for which you have received monetary reward.
  
  
• If you had one piece of advice to give an aspiring person in your field, job, or role, what would it be? Name some specific examples of when you have mentored an individual in the past.
  
  
• Assume you are teaching a new employee, group member or associate on a job or role that you do well. What would you teach them that cannot be found in the job book or SOP manual?
  
  

In the end, combining your skills with your core values is the key to career success! When you understand what you bring to the negotiating table, you can often expand your professional options. The bottom line is that when you take the time for self-assessment, you are more likely to set realistic objectives and establish an effective career plan to reach your goals.

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