ASSESSING YOURSELF
Making good decisions depends upon gathering good information. The first
step is to gather information about yourself. What do you like to do with your
time? What activities do you perform especially well? What are the things in
life that are most important to you? Interests (likes/dislikes), skills
(competencies/knowledge), and values (where you place importance) are some of
the most important factors to consider when exploring the choice of a
concentration and a future career. Knowing yourself well makes it easier to
narrow (or expand!) your options, because you can use what you know to evaluate
how well a particular concentration or career will fulfill what you like and
what is important to you. Your greatest professional satisfaction occurs when
you are in a career that uses those identified characteristics.
Values
Acknowledging that your value system extends into your work life will assist
you in achieving career satisfaction. When considering career fields, explore
the work values you think are important. Examples of work values include:
- working as a team member on projects
- being in a position of prestige or prominence
- having a position that offers job security
- being in a fast-paced environment with lots of variety
- high salary
- wanting to have pleasant co-workers
- opportunities for professional development
- organization that is sensitive to family issues
- environment that values and supports diversity
- opportunity to supervise others
- good benefits
- career advancement potential
- making a contribution to society
Interests
Most people want to enjoy and be truly interested in what they do every day.
That is why knowing your interests is so important. To begin the process of
clarifying your interests, here are some questions to ask yourself:
- What activities did you participate in during high school?
- How do you spend your free time?
- If you were not in school, how would you spend your time?
- What hobbies do you have?
- In order of most to least interesting, how would you rank these words: data, people, things?
Think back to high school and the types of activities you were involved in:
athletics, student clubs, honor societies, community service, and so on. What
was it that drew you to these activities? Why did you enjoy them - or did you?
Now think about the activities you are participating in during college; are
you:
- A member of a student organization? Which one? What do you do as a part of your membership?
- Involved in community activities or volunteer work? What drew you to these organizations?
- Participating in intramural or varsity athletics?
- A world traveler? What languages and cultures are most fascinating to you? Why?
- Working? Where do you work and what do you like/dislike about it?
- Meeting different types of people? Who are you drawn to and what do you do with your friends?
You may find that your college interests are very similar to those from high
school, that you have gotten more deeply involved in certain activities that
you were already interested in during your high school days. On the other hand,
college life may be introducing you to a variety of people, activities, and
organizations that you have never had the opportunity to get involved with in
the past. Your interests may be changing as you discover these new people and
activities. Take a look at how you spend your time, where you spend it, and
with whom. Answering the questions above can help give you a better sense of
who you are and what you want to be doing with your time (your work time as
well as your free time). Since you will be spending the majority of your time
at work, it makes sense to look for ways to incorporate your day-to-day interests
into your choices of academic study and careers.
Do not try to make the connection too early -- identify and explore your
interests before you try to connect them to a future career. Nevertheless, use
your imagination to generate ideas of how you might use your interests in a
future career -- you might be surprised at the connections you make!
If you are having trouble identifying your interests and how they relate to
various career options you might consider taking and interest inventory or
"test" to help you further identify and clarify your interests.
Consult with a career counselor to find out more about your options or visit
the Career Services links to online assessments.
Skills
Skills come in many shapes and sizes. Some researchers contend that by the
age of 21 the average person has hundreds of skills. It is rare in any one job
to use them all, but most occupations and career fields do have certain
combinations of skills that are important for achieving success and
satisfaction. Some skills are work content-specific; in other words, you must
have this skill to be in the occupation (e.g., a surgeon needs a thorough
knowledge of human anatomy, a computer programmer needs to know certain
programming languages). Other skills are transferable in nature; if you have
the skill in one career field, it "transfers" to another field. For
example, someone working in the accounting field should have strong
quantitative ability, excellent attention to detail, and solid organizational
skills; all three of these skill areas would be equally valued in finance,
marketing, or consulting positions. Personal qualities, such as enthusiasm,
motivation, and ability to learn quickly, are also considered skills.
It is not absolutely necessary (or possible) to be expert in all skills
desired in a particular profession. You do not need to be a whiz at calculus in
order to be a successful analyst. If you struggle consistently with a number of
skills that are crucial to performing in a particular occupation, you might
want to reassess your strengths to determine how and where they might be better
utilized. Many people do not enjoy doing things they do not do well. Others
consider the prospect of attempting to master new skills to be an exciting and
rewarding challenge. Be sure to examine your strengths (and weaknesses) and
decide for yourself how best to use them.
Weaknesses can be things that you do not do well. A weakness may also be a
task that takes you longer to accomplish - you might still perform it well, it
just takes longer than other tasks. For example, you may find it quite easy to
develop a spreadsheet to analyze a company's financials, but it make take you
longer to prepare the oral presentation of your results. Public speaking may be
a "weakness," because it takes you longer to prepare, even though you
still ultimately perform the task well. Something that you are usually unsure
about, that causes some hesitation or anxiety, even though you are competent
when you do it, can also be considered a weakness. In terms of your own
feelings, when you feel uncertain about the quality of your performance during
some activity, you might view this activity as a weakness of yours.
Once you identify what you perceive to be your weaknesses, spend some time
evaluating what you can do about them. If interviewing for a job is something
that makes you terribly nervous, a good strategy to attack that weakness is to
practice and refine your interviewing skills through a mock interview. If you
do not write well but are interested in careers that require a great deal of
report writing, you might enroll in an extra composition course to work on your
writing skills.
People will sometimes avoid certain careers because they
convince themselves that their weaknesses would keep them from being successful
in that field. When comparing your skills to those typically required in a
certain profession, do not be too quick in dismissing that career as an option
for you. If the job truly demands training you do not have, or if it sounds
boring or uninteresting to you, then you can decide to not to pursue it
further.
The point is, once you identify something that you think needs to be
improved, you can consult with faculty, friends, family, and counselors to
develop actions plans to address those areas for improvement. Once you develop
strategies to compensate for or get rid of your weaknesses, many more career
choices will feel open to you.
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