Importance of Self-Assesment

Think of your job as a relationship – Are you getting what you need out of this relationship? Or, is your job taking and taking without giving you really want? How do you find out? By isolating what you intrinsically need from the job. Research has identified three categories representing what a job can give you. You can assess how your job measures up by taking the self-assessment inventories in each section. Use this as to gauge the quality of your relationship with your job:

WORK VALUES. These are things like work autonomy (do you prefer to work alone and have much control over your work [high autonomy job] or do you prefer to work as part of a team [low autonomy job]), money (do you prefer a job with a high salary [high value for money] compared to similar job with a lesser salary, such as a not-for-profit [low value for money]), and helping others (do you prefer a job with a great deal of contact with customers/clients [high value for helping] or would you prefer to work with things such as data or technology [low value for helping others]. Assessing values can be difficult because to a certain extent, they all sound good, so it can be hard to not want a job that includes all of these values, but this is definitely not possible. Every job will tap a different combination of values. The best way to assess which values are really important and which are not so much, go through a list of values (try: https://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/cdc/files/Values.pdf or http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_85.htm) and mark each as either 1=can’t live happily without, 2=would be nice to have in my job, or 3=can leave off. Also, you may want to try a values assessment like this: http://careers.rutgers.edu/page.cfm?section_ID=8&page_id=339 which assesses a smaller group of values.

WORK SKILLS AND ABILITIES. Think about: What are you good at? What specific skills have you learned through on-the-job training or in school? What have others complimented you on? Answering these questions will help you begin to identify your skills and abilities. Everyone enjoying doing things they are good at. It is no different at work. Your job will be much more enjoyable if you get to utilize your strengths (Marcus Buckingham). These sites can get you started by providing checklists to help you identify your work skills and abilities: Purdue Owl, Creative Job Search, About Careers. An important note: solely focusing on exercising your strengths on-the-job is not a good strategy in that it inhibits you from learning new skills. As you go through the checklist, also think about what skills would be useful to you if you were to become proficient.

WORK INTERESTS. We all can remember a time when we are really, really passionate about something. So much so, that you lost track of time or you felt that you could just go on working on that project even through your lunch break. This hits on your interests or passions. Wouldn’t it be nice if every day you could go to work to engage in tasks that you truly love? Well, the first step is to work to identify your work interests. Through the identification of your work interests, you will gain an understanding of what kind of job you would like to work for. And, ultimately, you want to make sure that the job you choose is in something you enjoy doing.

Work interests are generally grouped into 6 areas based on the research of Holland (for a detailed handout about Holland’s research see: http://www.wiu.edu/advising/docs/Holland_Code.pdf or http://www.iseek.org/careers/interestassessment.html for a short description)

• Investigative: “Thinkers” who enjoy problem solving, discovery, and the scientific process

• Enterprising: “Persuaders” who enjoy leading, decision making, and selling ideas through

• Artistic: “Creators” who enjoy thinking creatively, making or developing, and art and culture

• Social: “Helpers” who enjoy helping others, teaching, and caring for others

• Conventional: “Organizers” who enjoy developing rules or procedures, initiating structure, and tracking progress

• Realistic: “Doers” who enjoy working outside, using raw materials, and building things with their hands

To discover your work interests check out: O*NET (U.S. Department of Labor, 2012): http://www.mynextmove.org/explore/ip Number of questions: 60. Response: Indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with each activity. Time: about 5 minutes. The results are categorized into 6 interest areas: Realistic, Investigative, Conventional, Enterprising, Social, and Artistic. Based on your scores, occupational matches are presented to you. The site also helps you to identify what level of education or on the job training you will need for each occupational match.

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