Beyond Your Academic Expertise: Recognize Your Professional Strengths

Graduate education builds deep knowledge and specialized expertise—but it also develops much more than that. Every time you explain a complex idea, collaborate across disciplines, manage competing priorities, solve an unexpected problem, or adapt to new technology, you are strengthening skills that matter in careers within and beyond academia.

These abilities can sometimes be difficult to recognize because they are embedded in everyday academic work. Yet identifying them is an important part of preparing for what comes next – especially as skills-based hiring becomes more common. In NACE’s Job Outlook 2026 survey, 70% of employers reported using skills-based hiring, which focuses on what candidates can do and how they demonstrate it. When you can name your transferable skills, you are better equipped to strengthen them, communicate their value, and provide evidence of how you have applied them in different settings.

The Career Readiness & Mobility Inventory can help you begin that process. This free, 10-minute self-assessment was developed by Career Launch Academy in collaboration with the National Association of Colleges and Employers. It explores the career-readiness skills employers value, along with relationship-building skills, life-design mindsets, and practices that support career mobility.

Early results offer an encouraging picture. To date, 86 University of Arizona graduate students, representing 19 graduate academic units, have completed the inventory. Collectively, respondents have rated themselves especially highly in professionalism, technology, teamwork, and critical thinking. They also reported notable strengths in areas such as acting with integrity, demonstrating dependability, respecting diverse perspectives, and using technology ethically.

These strengths reflect the many ways graduate students already contribute – as researchers, instructors, mentors, colleagues, project leaders, and members of their professional communities.

At the same time, the results point toward opportunities for more intentional career and self-development. Networking received the lowest average rating among the career-readiness skill areas. More than half of respondents had not yet created a career plan with guidance from a faculty or staff member, and nearly half had not yet contacted an alum to learn more about possible career paths.

These findings are not simply a list of skills that are “strong” or “weak.” Instead, they illustrate the value of reflection. Career development is an ongoing process, and even highly capable people benefit from identifying where they would like to gain more knowledge, practice, or experience.

The goal is not to develop every skill at once. A meaningful next step can be much smaller – and more manageable.

Begin by completing the Career Readiness & Mobility Inventory, then review your results alongside the University of Arizona’s Core Professional Competencies Model and ask yourself: What are my current strengths—and which skills would I like to develop next? Together, these resources can help you connect your experiences with the skills you are building and identify campus programs and resources that support your continued development.

Your next step might be attending a workshop, requesting feedback on your résumé, speaking with an alumnus, initiating a career conversation, or choosing one competency to practice more intentionally this semester.

Discover your strengths. Identify opportunities for growth. Plan your next professional development step.