Helping a student who doesn't know what they're good at
This is for you if a capable student sits across from you, you ask what they're good at, and they go blank. Not because there is nothing there. Because no one has handed them the words yet, and the question feels like something they can get wrong.
Nothing is wrong with this student, and they are not clueless about themselves. The question is just badly built for them. "What are you good at?" asks an 18-to-22-year-old with almost no work history to summon evidence they have never been asked to collect.
Recognition is far easier than recall. So stop asking them to generate the answer, and give them something to react to instead.
Their results already hold it. Open Discovering Your Strengths with them, near the front of their Career Discovery report. It lists their top ten strengths, ranked, each in plain language, with a line on what they likely do well. If the full list feels like a lot, the Overview page up front shows the same top strengths at a glance.
Now do this, together.
- Ask them to read the ten slowly and pick the three that sound most like them. Not the three that sound impressive. The three that make them think, that's me.
- For each of the three, ask for one real moment it was true. Not a resume line. A specific scene: a class project, a shift at work, a night they got a group unstuck. Small counts.
- Write each strength down in their words, with its moment next to it. Three strengths, three scenes. That page is theirs to keep.
That page is the whole point. A strength with a real moment behind it stops being a word on a screen and becomes something they own. They can carry it into a major, an application, the first hard interview question.
You did not tell them who they are. You handed them a mirror and stayed while they looked.
Coaching questions
This is not a script to run top to bottom. Once a student starts to recognize themselves, pull whatever fits and follow it. A few that help with this moment:
Recognizing it
- Which three sound most like you? What made those three stand out?
- Which one would someone who knows you well pick out first?
- What surprised you on that list?
Making it real
- When did that strength last show up? Walk me through what happened.
- What felt easy to you there that isn't easy for everyone?
- How did people react when you did it?
Carrying it forward
- Where could this strength do real work next term?
- How would you say this one out loud, in your own words?
When you want more range, the strengths question bank ladders from first recognition to deeper understanding and use.
