Employability = self-knowledge + self-confidence + self-responsibility + self-demand + self-development

Which are the keys to your professional employability in this highly unpredictable and competitive environment?

Today it is more important than ever that you are clear about and every day enhance of your work value.

The brutal paradigm shift, with sectors and professions suddenly at risk of survival, multiply the usefulness and urgency of this revealing exercise of introspection.

We are living in a particularly difficult time, with great risks, which entail a growing and natural concern for the future.

And at the same time we are in the era of exponential opportunities for those who have the courage, the enthusiasm, the talent, the desire, the resilience … and some luck that always helps.

Today I focus on employability assumed in the first person, based on five excellent and complementary attitudes:

• Self-knowledge: The foundations, the beginning of any personal improvement journey. Know yourself in depth. How important it is to identify the good and the improvable that is in you, also exploring the “hidden part” in the iceberg of your personality. Also listening to what others tell us, even if sometimes it hurts us or we do not agree. Without settling, always moving forward, with gratitude and focus.

• Self-confidence: Another basic and key ingredient to explore new paths, learn and question positively to grow personally and professionally. An emotional state that we would have to train from school, given its importance for our happiness, to overcome adversity and take advantage of life’s opportunities.

• Self-responsibility: A sign of maturity and realism that increases our options, by meaning that we take control of our life and professional career. The best, what they enjoy the most and are most valuable in their work, make decisions, some easier and others harder or riskier. They are proactive, protagonists, they do not wait idly, they build their future every day.

• Self-demand: The positive desire of being better, to improve their professional profile every day, to be alert to how the market evolves to anticipate and prepare well for new job requirements. A mentality of healthy search for excellence, open to change as an opportunity.

• Self-development: The culmination of all previous efforts. The art and technique to be more competitive and valuable every day, extracting the best of your skills, competencies and values. Of our classic strengths and of our new capacities with the aim of contributing in a powerful way and leaving a good legacy.

Others can help you! And it is great and very enriching that you ask for their support. Plus, you’re lucky because today’s work environment is conducive to these conversations. Fortunately, there are more and more experts, more focus on employability in good companies and Human Resources teams, and better methodologies (DISC / Insights, career anchors, Strenghts Finder, among others).

But keep in mind that employability starts with you. You are the main protagonist of this work and in this Covid era this is more true than ever.

The result will depend on how clear you are of your Ikigai (the conjunction of strengths, passions and your labor market value), on how you put your abilities into play every day with commitment and rigor. Of your perseverance to achieve your dreams, of how you genuinely connect and contribute to others, of how you learn from your successes and mistakes.

Ultimately, it will be the result of how you manage your “five cars”: self-knowledge, self-confidence, self-responsibility, self-demand and self-development.

Hopefully you are lucky on this journey. I encourage you, despite the difficult current context, to play to win the game of your life, with confidence and optimism.

Article previously published in AEDIPE CENTRO

David Reyero Trapiello – Senior HR Business Partner – Sanofi Iberia
e-mail: David.reyero@sanofi.com / Twitter: @davidreyero73 / Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/davidreyerotrapiello/