Getting to know Yourself

The first step in making a decision about your career future involves taking a look at yourself. What are your interests, skills, values, characteristics, and personality type? By knowing yourself better, you can more easily see what career fields are the best match for you.

What are My Interests?

Making major and/ or career decisions depends on gathering useful information about yourself and careers. There are a number of ways to gather information about your current interests. Here are a few assessments available in the Career Resource Center:

• Strong Interest Inventory (SII): The SII is a psychological assessment used in career development. The SII helps you explore and identify your interests relating to occupations and potential careers.
• Discover: The "Interest Inventory" will help you identify your strongest work-related interests.

What are my Values?

Values are the deeply held commitments that influence your thinking when you are faced with choices. They indicate what you consider most important in your life.

• Value Surveys: Career counselors can provide several different surveys to you that help clarify important motivators for you and how they impact career choices.
• Discover: The "Values Inventory" will ask you to rank different aspects of work that represent six important work values and will help you explore career options.

What are My Abilities?

Abilities can be acquired and developed through exposure to, and repetition of, a task or learning processes that may take place in the classroom or laboratory, through training or study, or in a workplace.

• Discover: The "Abilities Inventory" will help you identify your existing work skills and see occupations that use those skills.
• Skills Sort: An activity that is available in the Career Resource Center to help you identify your present and desired work skills in terms that match career information.

What is My Personality Type?

Each one of us has a distinct personality, like an innate blueprint that stays with us for life. Identifying your own personality type will help you flourish in certain jobs and discover career satisfaction.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI): The MBTI is a psychological assessment used in career development. The MBTI helps you explore and identify your personality types such as decision making styles and learning styles. This assessment is available in the Career Resource Center and helps to identify your personality type through your preferences related to where you get your energy, how you learn, how you make decisions and your lifestyle. Knowing which one of the 16 different personality types you match facilitates the explorations and understanding of your choice of major, occupation, and work setting.

How can the Internet Help Me?

• The Campbell Interest and Skill Survey
• The Career Key
• Career Planning Steps
• Deciding on a Major
• Human metrics
• The Keirsey Temperament Sorter
• Life Colors Online