Self Assessment

• Values: the things that are important to you, like achievement, status, and autonomy

• Interests: what you enjoy doing, i.e. playing golf, taking long walks, hanging out with friends

• Personality: a person's individual traits, motivational drives, needs, and attitudes

• Skills: the activities you are good at, such as writing, designing and implementing experiments, computer programming, teaching, etc.

Values Inventories

The process of values clarification is a frequently used component of career exploration. It assists individuals in identifying priorities, and it encompasses any activity that promotes self-examination. Values serve as a guide for behavior and as a basis for planning. Values are indicated in goals, attitudes, interests, feelings, activities, behavior, and even by problems. Relating values to work decisions and choices helps a person determine his or her reasons for wanting to work, the characteristics of occupations that are appealing to them, and their career goals.

There are two types of values: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic values are related to the work itself and what it contributes to society. Extrinsic values include external features, such as physical setting and earning potential. Value inventories will ask you to answer questions like the following:

• Is a high salary important to you?
• Is it important for your work to involve interacting with people?
• Is it important for your work to make a contribution to society?
• Is having a prestigious job important for you?

The Stanford CDC offers a values worksheet () to help you identify your most important work values. Additional examples of values assessments are Super's Work Values Inventory and the Career Values Card Sort. Each can be purchased for a fee.

Interests

Our interests are an important dimension of who we are. By identifying what we really like and dislike we are better able to determine the careers and environments that will best satisfy our needs. These general questions are provided to help you define your interests:

• What fascinates you?
• What excites you?
• What do you naturally do well?
• What is it about the work you are doing/will be doing that is likely to provide the greatest, sense of reward?

Interest inventories can help you measure and identify your likes and dislikes in a wide range of general activities and you can use this information to develop a personal interest profile. Your profile is then compared to the profiles of other individuals successfully employed in specific occupational categories. A high degree of similarity between your interests and the interest's people in certain jobs might give you some ideas of possible careers to explore. Interest inventories do not, however, tell you what you should or should not do or pursue. The instruments below offer tools to help you define your interests.

The Strong Interest Inventory measures your level of interest in occupational areas, activities, school subjects, and work environments. It then compares your interests with working professionals in a wide variety of occupations. This assessment is taken on-line and is available from the Stanford CDC.

Career Maze offers interest inventory tools for a fee.

Personality

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines personality as “ the complex of characteristics that distinguishes an individual or a nation or group; especially : the totality of an individual's behavioral and emotional characteristics.”

Knowing your Personality Preferences can help you make more informed career decisions. Individuals generally have a “default” way of living in the world; a preferred way of behaving and each of us is a combination of the four scales.

Questions to assist you in considering your personality:

• Where, primarily, do you receive and direct your energy? (Introverted/Extroverted)
• How do you prefer to process information? (Sensing/Intuition)
• How do you prefer to make decisions? (Thinking/Feeling)
• How do you prefer to organize your life? (Perceiving/Judging)

A trusted tool in career and organizational development, the Myers Briggs ® model of personality focuses on how you prefer to behave - not how you actually behave. The Personality Preference/Meyers-Briggs Type Site provides an introduction to type.

Some of the most important recent work done in the field on Personality Typing has been done by David Keirsey, who created the theory of temperament associated with type. Keirsey's model of temperament is based on people's "core needs" such as the need for freedom, the need to be useful, or the need to be competent.

Skills

Knowing one's skills and abilities is an important factor in finding a fulfilling job. When you're using the skills you enjoy the greater the chance for job satisfaction.

• What are the specific content skills, transferable skills, and personal qualities and strengths that you have to offer?
• Where and how have you been able to demonstrate these skills and qualities?
• Which of your skills is most important in your next job?

To assist you in your own skills identification and assesment, we recommend the following Skills Assessment Exercise.

Additionally, America 's Career Infonet offers online tools for skills self discovery.

          Next