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Self Assessment
5-05-2015
Choosing a career is not something to take lightly, nor is it easy to assess. There are many different factors that need to be considered when choosing the new career you'd like to pursue. Self-assessment can help you make an informed decision by evaluating your skills, abilities and interests.
There is no single test that will tell you exactly which job is right for you. What you need to do is some self-evaluation. Some people also hire career counselors to assist them in this process. They can give tests to help point you in the right direction and let you know what your options are. There are several things to consider in a self-assessment.
Values: What is important to you? What do you need to stay motivated and energized?
Your values are extremely important to consider when choosing a new career. Values act as a guide for behavior and a basis for planning your career. It helps determine your reasons for wanting to work and the characteristics that are appealing to your career goals. You'll need to decide how important certain aspects are like salary, work environment, the prestige of the position, balancing work and home, etc.
The types of things the tests a career counselor may give will ask relate to items you feel are important in a job such as:
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Working in a job that competes with others
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Working in a job where many workers earn a large amount of money
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Working in a job which requires a considerable amount of thought and reasoning
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Behaving in a way consistent with some moral code
Interests: What do you like to do? How do you spend your time?
It is no surprise that your personal interests will be similar in your career. A career counselor will administer, score, and interpret the results of this test. They will compare your interests with those within different careers. There are online versions of these tests that look at different personality traits to help you determine careers related to your interest. There are six different types of personalities:
1. Realistic: People who have athletic or mechanical ability, prefer to work with objects, machines, tools, plants or animals, or to be outdoors
2. Investigative: People who like to observe, learn, investigate, analyze, evaluate or solve problems
3. Artistic: People who have artistic, innovating or intuitional abilities and like to work in unstructured situations using their imagination and creativity
4. Social: People who like to work with people to enlighten, inform, help, train, or cure them, or are skilled with words
5. Enterprising: People who like to work with people, influencing, persuading, performing, leading or managing for organizational goals or economic gain
6. Conventional: People who like to work with data, have clerical or numerical ability, carry out tasks in detail or follow through on others' instructions
Personality: What are your unique traits and characteristics?
Most personality tests are based on the Jungian Personality Theory. It divides people into eight personality types (extroverts, introverts, thinking, feeling, sensing, intuitive, judging, and perceptive) and career counselors will use these types to help clients choose careers. Career counselors will not use this type of test exclusively, but will use it in conjunction with other tests.
Skills: What do you do best? What are you good at?
When considering which career is for you, you need to assess the skills you have, those you are interested in acquiring and how much you enjoy using these skills. To help you, there are two types of assessments available: the formal assessment and the informal assessment.
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The formal assessment can either be administered via computer or pen and pencil and fall into one of five categories:
1. Aptitude and ability tests
2. Interest inventories
3. Values assessments
4. Career development assessments
5. Personality or management style inventories.
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An informal assessment is information from observations, reports from supervisors, school and work records, interviews, and computer programs and give you information about your current interests.
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