What would they want to know about you?
	What will differentiate you from other applicants?

SKILL EVALUATION - What do I have to offer? - what am I selling?
Taking the plunge and deciding to change jobs can be unnerving and involve a great deal of soul searching, particularly if you have not written a CV for many years or you want to change career direction.  By examining your skills and abilities you can determine your relevant strengths which will help you in determining what you have to offer. We suggest you define your main skill sets as a useful way to start the evaluation process.  For oil and gas personnel, you may wish to divide your skills into the following areas:

	Technical Knowledge – specialist and particular disciplines e.g. Structural Geology, Seismic Depth Processing, Reservoir Simulation etc.
	Industry Knowledge - Licensing, Deepwater Exploration, etc.
	IT/Technical – software applications, hardware, operating systems, databases.
	Regional – geographical areas worked e.g. North Sea, Nigeria, Caspian, CIS.
	Commercial – transferable skills, financial, accounting, budgeting, languages.
	Managerial – business development, project and manpower management.
	Analytical – problem solving or decision-making abilities, computational etc..

Once you have established your skills set, evaluate each skill individually; give them a score from 1 to 10 and ask yourself these questions:

	What are my main strengths, what do I do best?
	What are my main weaknesses?
	What skills do I lack, could I retrain?

KEYWORDS
In addition to identifying your skills, try and determine the “Action words” that illustrate and support your skills and experiences. You will find this evaluation very useful when writing your CV.   You may want to prioritise your transferable skills. Remember these are skills that you can bring to any job and any organisation. There are numerous words you can use and the following are just a few examples.

Planning Words:
Created, Designed, Scheduled, Engineered, Innovated, Justified, Tailored, Planned, Devised, Developed, Estimated, Revised, Formed, Organised, Established.

Leadership Words:
Directed, Administered, Specified, Authorised, Delegated, Managed, Coordinated, Guided, Controlled, Trained, Mentored, Supervised.

Responsibility Words:
Evaluated, Initiated, Authorised, Performed, Developed, Implemented, Handled, Operated, Maintained, Coordinated, Audited, Assembled.

Interaction Words:
Conferred, Counselled, Inspired, Appraised, Resolved, Coordinated, Negotiated, Clarified, Recommended, Mentored, Conferred.

Investigative Words:
Analysed, Correlated, Reviewed, Assessed, Observed, Evaluated, Computed, Verified, Investigated, Researched.

SELF ASSESSMENT : What do I want to do? What can I do?
Now that you have defined your skills and strengths, start to think about what you would like to do in the future and how you will achieve your goal.  The following occupational questions might help you picture what you want to do and where you want to be.

	What is preventing me from getting where I want to go?
	What do/did I enjoy most in my current/previous position and why?
	What do/did I least enjoy in my current/previous position and why?
	Do I want more or less responsibility?
	Where do I want to be in 2 or 5 years time?
	What is my ultimate career goal?
	Can I relocate, would I like to travel?
	Do I want to spend less time commuting?
	What is important to me – recognition, money, family, power?