In this lecture, we will review what we have learned in the course. Then, in the last lecture, we will discuss future steps that you may want to take to become a skills management pro. The overarching goal of Individual Skills Management, is to develop a guide for career enhancement in a competitive, ever changing environment. Our intended target audience is young to middle aged, however you define it, educated working professionals who are looking for efficient ways to attain new work related skills. In a nutshell, the most important recommendation in this course is that to accomplish the goal, you should learn how to quantify your skills so you can realistically estimate the total skill set score for your desired position. Once you have learned how to objectively measure your skills, you will be able to effectively organize, develop, and present them in a skill based job selection process. The main idea behind the course is that Individual Skills Management is a skill in itself. Like any other skill, it can be learned and perfected. Therefore, if you want to effectively use your professional development time and accomplish better results, we think that you should take skills management seriously, and invest some time into mastering it. In this course, we only provided a brief introduction to Individual Skills Management. We recommended some practical approaches, methods, and tools that can be useful to organize, quantify, measure, develop, and monitor your skills. We also suggested some ideas about how to better present and promote your skills to prospective employers. In lesson one, we began by discussing what Skills Management is about. For inspiration, we derived some useful lessons from business strategy. For example, we discussed how companies identify, develop, and measure key competencies to succeed in a competitive environment. Then, we contemplated the desired outcomes of a possible Individual Skills Management training program, trying to envision what you may have achieved had you completed such a program. For this purpose, we introduced the Individual Skills Management Framework. In the end of the course, you'll be able to check your progress against the framework and see what you have learned and what you may still need to learn about Individual Skills Management in the future. In lesson two, we discussed what practical approaches, methods, and tools can be used for individual skills management in a competitive job market environment. First, we demonstrated that to operationalize and effectively manage your skills, you will need to cluster them into job specific skill sets. After that, we learned how to use performance management techniques to objectively evaluate the level of skill acquisition for each skill within the skill set. Finally, we learned how to realistically estimate a total skill set score. As a result, by now you should be able to quantify, measure, and monitor your skills organized into job specific skill sets. Also in lesson two, we introduced JAFAR, The skills Manager, which is a spreadsheet application specifically designed for this course. We recommended that you make JAFAR, your skills management companion and use it often, very much the same ways you use your favorite yoga, weight training, weight control, and other personal development apps. JAFAR Is a simple but powerful tool, in addition to helping you organize skill building routines, it can deliver tangible outcomes and even perform some magic tricks. For example, with the push of a button, JAFAR can convert your skill building notes into a powerful selection criteria statement, that can be immediately useful for your next job application. In lesson three and four, we put skills management to work and explored how you could implement the methods and techniques introduced in the course in three, typical career growth scenarios, namely job excellence, job enhancement, and job diversification. Using the same scenarios, we demonstrated some of the tangible outcomes provided by the Skills Manager App. While working on scenario one, Job Excellence, you focused on the job you know well, your current job, and learned how to master skills management methods and techniques. Using a realistic case study and utilizing some of the performance management approaches used in the business world, you learned how to conduct a thorough job analysis, identify benchmarks and benchmarking criteria, collect evidence, obtain and validate assessment results. To help you in the process, we introduced a range of new methods and tools, some of which we designed specifically for this course such as the JAFAR, Individual Skills Management Model, The SIMPLE Critical Tasks Framework, The Three-Tiered Skill Set Model, and The Individual Skills Management Matrix. The first tangible outcome that you achieved in the course is an improved ability to objectively evaluate, quantify, and monitor your existing job specific skill set. By now, you should be able to conduct a thorough and objective skill set review and come up with an externally verified competency dashboard and a realistic estimate for your total skill set score. While working on scenario two, Job Enhancement, you focused on a job you are interested in, potentially your next job, and learned how to implement skills management methods and techniques to improve your competitive standing in the job selection process. You learned how to estimate your likely competitive standing in the job competition, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and decide on a concrete and effective course of action for professional development. The second tangible outcome of the course is that you learned how you can use JAFAR, The Skills Manager application, to generate a powerful and informative Selection Criteria Statement. This is an evidence based data driven and externally verified document, that you can use to communicate the increased value of your job specific skill set to potential employers. We also discussed how you can incorporate the data into a functional resume, if it is applicable in your situation. When working on scenario three, Job Diversification, you focused on an opportunity to extend your job search area by adding a skill in a different occupational field. You learned how to use skills management methods and techniques to guide you through the entry process by identifying a sequence of concrete targets for effective professional development. The third tangible outcome of the course is that you learned how to use skills management methods and techniques as a guiding framework to set and accomplish concrete and effective skill-building goals. By now, you should be able to use JAFAR, The Skills Manager Application, to design a job specific skill set for the job you are interested in but may not be able to attain because of an insufficient skill level. Then, you should be able to decide on a concrete data driven course of action for professional development. Finally, you should be able to convert the course of action into quantifiable targets, and set a sequence of smarter goals. Overall, when working on the course, we wanted to fill a void, while there are thousands of online courses offering career builders numerous opportunities for learning new skills, there are very few courses teaching people how to effectively organize and manage their skills portfolio. We think that upon completion of the course, you should be more confident in your ability to build and strengthen your skills base. So eventually, you will become more successful in the strategic game of competitive selection. By utilizing the methods and techniques of individual skills management, you should be able to better prepare for future job competitions and to achieve higher scores. This way, you will have more control over your career growth. One final note, these days, the concept of quantified self is getting more attraction, more and more people use all sorts of gadgets to measure and control virtually everything. Personal Development Apps have become widespread. Someday, Individual Skills Management will be commonplace. But right now, you have the advantage of being among the first to master it. Welcome to the club.
