Self-Assessment

 

Know Yourself

To successfully navigate to your next job or career transition, you need to know yourself – your strengths, your passions, and your goals.

• Are you ready to start a job search or career transition?
• What do you want to do next?
• What type of culture or environment do you seek?
• A catalog of your strengths and skills, including your “transferable skills,” i.e., skills you have used in one job, career, hobby, or volunteer position that can be used in a different one.
• An understanding of how others view your strengths, contributions, and value

There are several different tools available to help you address these questions, and no one “best” tool. All offer insight that may be helpful to you.

Do the Self-Assessments 

During Orientation, you will be asked to complete some self-assessment homework to discuss with your Mentor. It is in the Orientation packet, and available below:

Required Homework

1. Your Goals: 5x5x5 (WORD, PDF)
2. Transferable Skills (WORD, PDF)
3. Self-Assessment Summary Table: Answer some additional questions and summarize all your self-assessment work in this Self-Assessment Summary Table (WORD, PDF). Send it to your mentor prior to your first meeting.

Optional Assessments

• Clifton StrengthsFinder - Fee-based assessment (highly recommended). 
• High 5 Assessment - Free strengths assessment (not as valuable)
• My Next Move Interest Inventory and Career Exploration
• PrinciplesYou - Free tool that assesses how you think, engage with others, and apply yourself
• LinkedIn's Career Explorer. If you have one or a few ideas of what you might like to do next, this tool can help you get smarter about your options. Here's a great article about how to use it.
• DARE Communication Style Assessment. While not specifically a career assessment, the DARE Communication Style Assessment can help you to understand how to better communicate with others.

Interpret your Self-Assessments

Most of your self-assessment is self-explanatory with some reflection, but below are some resources to help you better understand and utilize the results of your self-assessments.

DO NOT look at these until AFTER you've completed your self-assessments as you may be influenced by what you read.

• Decoders for Clifton StrengthsFinders: Quick Reference Guide, Translator for Resumes and LinkedIn
• Decoders for DARE: Communication Styles, Strengths and Vulnerabilities, Summary Table

Find additional content on our website

Read this very helpful article for a guided path forward: How To Choose A Career: Tips For Picking The Right Path

Use the SEARCH feature to browse these Self-Assessment categories:

• Goal clarification
• Assessment tools
• Transferable skills