Assess Your Career

What is a career assessment?

A career assessment is a prominent part of your career discovery. It is a process of assessing your personality traits, strengths, talents and values. By conducting a career assessment in these four areas you are likely to discover which career fits you best. The higher a career scores in all four areas, the more assured you can be that it is one that suits you the most.

The information you gather from assessing your career should assist you in clarifying who you really are, what you can do so well and what you would like to do. Identified as the cornerstone of one’s career growth and development, career assessment should lead you to greater self-knowledge and to a place where you can collectively look at all options available to you and make well-informed decisions. Research has shown that people who know themselves well are better prepared and are in a better position to make rational decisions towards a successful future.

Career assessment should help you accomplish insights, clarity and direction. You should also have a general overview of your skills, interests, personality, values, needs, career beliefs and the obstacles you may encounter along the way as you build the career you love.

By understanding yourself better and having an idea of what type of work and work environment are a great fit for you, you already possess an edge that sets you apart from the majority of people looking for work without self-knowledge. You know exactly what to target and maximize on in order to move your career forward. You are less likely to rely on chance to move your career forward.

Career Assessment Tools

There are various formal and informal career assessment tools that can be used to help you assess your career. Formal career assessment tools such as the Myer Briggs Type Indicator test is one of the most well-known assessment tool around the world. However, an informal assessment with simple questionnaires and other creative methods, have also been proven to be successful in assessing one’s career. In this course, we will use both tools to help you get a broader and inclusive understanding of your abilities and opportunities.

Exercise 1

10 Questions to help you assess the state of your career/work today

• What experience do I want to gain from my work?
• What do I want to improve or change the most in my current work situation
• What are my most preferred work problems to solve?
• What are my least preferred work problems to solve?
• What is/would be my most preferred role?
• What are the key strengths that I want to apply the most at work in general and for my next assignment?
• I am most interested in learning or improving the following skills or abilities :
• In general, my work interests mostly have to do with 1 or 2 of the following categories: human resources or event planning; data analytics or software development; making or fixing things
• If there was a way, I would love to connect my work with the following activities outside work interests: ex: Volunteering your skills to youth clubs or non-profit organisation.
• I want the impact of my career to be It is okay for now if you are unsure of the impact you want to make with your impact your career. should, However, it is something worth thinking about and to be consciously planned towards.

Submit your answers to your advisor for a review, but most importantly to give them an insight into your current state.