How To Do A SWOT Analysis Of Yourself

How to Use the SWOT Analysis Tool

SWOT stands for –

Strengths – Awareness of your own strengths

Weaknesses – Awareness of your own weaknesses

Opportunities – Perceive your own opportunities

Threats – Perceive risks/threats to yourself

Strengths – Awareness of your own strengths

In life, you can see someone who doesn’t do well in school, but when they work, they achieve a lot. How would you explain this phenomenon? Maybe each person will have different answers, based on the perception, opinion, experience of each individual. From the perspective of occupational psychology, one of the reasons often mentioned is that the individual has chosen a suitable career, promoting his/her strengths.

For example, marketing strategy staff requires the ability to analyze, reason logically, judgement, creativity, Event organizers require dynamic, agile, handling and immediate problem-solving, ability to work as a team, etc. If that individual has qualities and strengths suitable to the nature of the job, the ability to succeed in the profession is easy to explain.

Strengths can be understood as positive or beneficial internal personal factors that help you achieve your goals. These are the things that you can control, such as: positive personality traits, relevant skills, competitiveness, knowledge, work experience, rapport, responsibilities, empathy, passion for work…

Those strengths can help you meet the requirements of the job, making you different from others. Therefore, accurately identifying your own strengths is an important key to help you open the door to success. During the interview process, employers often ask this question to candidates. So, right now, think about answering questions about your strengths.

About personality traits: What good character traits can help you succeed in the future?
About experience and skills: What experiences have you had that can help you meet the job requirements? What skills do you have that stand out?
About the ability to manipulate: Are you good at practical manipulations? (like dexterity).
About mindset: What is your thinking strength? For example, is your thinking ability more analytic or synthetic? Or both? You are good at coming up with new ideas or analyzing ideas, especially analyzing, commenting on other people’s ideas…
About qualifications: Can your degree meet the recruitment requirements?
About personal competencies: Do you have any outstanding personal competencies?
About knowledge: Have you accumulated a lot of knowledge to confidently answer questions from employers as well as meet job requirements? (specialized knowledge and related knowledge, social knowledge)
About relationships: Do you have positive relationships that can support you at work?

Strengths here are not only understood as your own strengths (compared to weaknesses) but also understood as outstanding and unique characteristics that you hold when compared to competitors. Therefore, you need to see yourself in relation to others. For example, in class, you need to know that you have abilities and characteristics that stand out from your friends, which can be seen as an advantage for you to win. Therefore, you also need to compare with those around you, with your competitors to answer the following important questions:

Do you have any outstanding personality traits/values that you believe others are not or are unable to express like you? (e.g. patience, energy, ability to listen, etc.)
What characteristics/capabilities/strengths do you have that stand out from others? (eg: appearance, voice, foreign language ability, relationships, skills, qualifications…).
What kind of work do you think you would do better than others?

Weaknesses – Awareness of your own weaknesses

You must have also heard the expression ” Achilles heel” from the story of Achilles who was the hero of the Trojan War? This idiom was born to say that anyone or anything has a weakness. Identifying and listing your own weaknesses is a process of self-reflection.

Weaknesses can be understood as internal personal factors that are negative or make it difficult to achieve your goals. These are also factors that you can control, such as: negative personality traits, bad work habits, lack of work or related experience, poor ability to establish relationships, lack of career orientation, lack of career management skills…

It is very difficult to get a job or a promotion if you are applying for or working in a job that requires skills you do not have or are weak. For example, if you are working as a sales person but your weakness is in communication skills, it will be difficult to have a good career if you do not try to overcome this weakness. Therefore, when you recognize your own weaknesses, you need to find ways to overcome the obstacles that it causes for you. Please answer the following questions honestly :

What knowledge and skills are you not good at?
What personality traits/habits hold you back at work?
What kind of work do you not like?
What are the weaknesses that many people around you judge about you?

To properly recognize all of your weaknesses that can negatively affect your job opportunities and career growth, you need time to reflect on yourself and learn about the profession. You should also ask for the opinion of family and friends about your weaknesses.

Opportunities – Perceive your own opportunities

Opportunities are positive or beneficial personal external factors that can help you achieve your goals. These are factors that you cannot control, such as: the development of the economy, modern technology, the birth or development of particular professions, the emergence of a demand for skills or expertise, strong development trend of the profession you are studying or working..

You can take advantage of these opportunities to look for a job or decide on a career direction. Answering the following questions can help you see your opportunities:

What trends do you see in your discipline/field, and do you see certain advantages in them?
Does the development of the economy create job opportunities for you? (For example, the signing of trade agreements, the integration of the economy)
Is your field of study growing and the demand for labour in this field is huge?
Can the remarkable development of information technology help you? (For example, does the Internet make it easy for you to find a job?)

You can also find great opportunities in the classroom, in seminars, at community networking events, in a new role or project that requires a new skill set.

Threats – Perceive risks/threats to yourself

Threats are personal external factors that are negative or make it difficult to achieve your goals. Those are factors that you also cannot control, such as: economic consolidation or restructuring, changing labour market requirements and their impact on businesses, a change in professional standards that you do not meet, a decrease in demand for one of your skills, a technological evolution for which you are not prepared, the emergence of competitors…

Answer the following questions to shed light on the risks to you:

What are the obstacles you face at work?
Are your friends in competition with you for a job opportunity, a project, or a role/responsibility?
Is your industry experiencing big changes? (For example, the free movement of labour in some sectors of the AEC, including yours. This exposes you to more competitors for job opportunities.)
Could technological changes/requirements threaten your employability or your position at work?
Is your field / field of study decreasing labour demand?
Are there changes to the professional standards that you are not currently meeting?

An external factor can also be both an opportunity and a challenge. For example, economic integration can be an opportunity because it can open you up to new job opportunities, with more attractive income streams and higher advancement possibilities, but it can also be threats because your competitors will be more, requiring higher professional requirements such as foreign languages, technical skills and soft skills.

Personal SWOT Analysis – EXAMPLE

The following is a SWOT analysis of a student majoring in marketing.

Strengths:

About thinking: have the ability to create, analyze and synthesize
About skills: Confident communication and presentation in front of crowds. Good writing skills.
Personality: High responsibility for work. Sociable, dynamic, quickly adapting to new environments.

Weaknesses:

Poor time management (tends to procrastinate).
The ability to control emotions is not good.
Clumsy in practical operations.
English communication skills are limited.

Opportunity:

Industry development trend

Threat:

The number of students majoring in Marketing is large.
Increasing recruitment standards

From the SWOT analysis the student can look for ways to promote his strengths and pursue career opportunities that are suitable for his strengths. He also needs to devise measures to overcome weaknesses, determine how to use strengths to reduce risks caused by the external environment, and set up plans to prevent weaknesses from being severely impacted from the outside environment.

In summary, a SWOT analysis is an important, necessary and useful step to help you think about your current and future possibilities, in relation to the external environment, i.e. the job market. In which, strengths (S) and weaknesses (W) are factors of the self, opportunities (O) and threats (T) lie in the external environment.

How To Do A SWOT Analysis Of Yourself