Identifying my strengths and weaknesses.

I think one of the hardest things to do in relation to professional growth is to accurately identify what your strengths and weaknesses are. I either end up over or under evaluating myself. This is due to who I think I am maybe completely different how other people actually perceive me to be.

I used a few different ways to identify my strengths and weaknesses. This consisted of:

• Asking my peers and those around me: this helped me create a less self-serving bias list. I avoided asking people that I wasn’t too close with as they would give me vague and ‘nicer’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Taking an MBTI test: this helped me understand my personality better and how this can be reflected in my strengths and weaknesses
• SWOT list: This helped me create a large list of roughly 12 traits on each side which can be reviewed and further analysed to see which traits are more significant.

My strengths:

1. I'm a patient and motivated learner - I am able to complete projects and courses even if I find them frustratingly difficult. I don’t give up but take a break from things and return to them with a clear mind. I am able to recognise that see the value in things that I may find boarding as they will benefit me in the long run.

2. I'm a good active listener - I am able to effectively listen to others by paying attention and retaining what they say. This allows me to build a good rapport with others and is a key factor as to why my team working skills are good. I am able to show others that I care about what is being said and react to their remarks appropriately.

3. Strong attention to detail - I often do wider research to ensure my designs and code are extremely thorough and detailed. From ensuring all my comments are consistent to using the correct naming conventions such as BEM. This helps make my work less error-prone and of a higher industry standard.

My Weaknesses:

1. I'm not confident in my abilities - I suffer from imposter syndrome a lot and tend to shy away from showing off projects I have created or standing out in general as I feel as though my skillset is lacking. It's a major weakness that i need to work on as it will limit my career opportunities in the future.

2. I find it hard to say no - I often find myself juggling too many tasks due to not being able to refuse to say no to others. I really enjoy helping others but this can become dangerous when overdone. I find myself feeling burnt out due to the extra workload I have because I can’t say no. Learning how to politely but firmly say no will help me focus on my career in terms of my productivity and performance.

3. I over-work myself and do not complete much at the same time - I tend to find myself falling into tutorial hell due to this urge to learn everything that I find intriguing or interesting. This results in me learning a lot in a crammed period of time but ending up forgetting most of what I have learnt due to overlearning. I end up investing time in tutorials that provide no real benefit for my career and skillset. I need to be able to recognise when learning something will be beneficial or not.

Next steps

My next step is to create a professional development plan which will help provide me with a list of broken down actionable goals that will help me develop not only my weaknesses but also my strengths.