Self-Assessment: Step one!

For the next month I will be blogging about the Career Planning Process for those students looking to start thinking about their career options and job success. Self-Assessment plays a vital role in developing your Career Planning Process. For many of us we have yet to figure out what our values, skills, and interests truly are. Making plans for your future can be difficult. Starting with self-assessment can give you more choices and increase your confidence that you are on the right career path.

Self-Assessment is identifying likes and dislikes in terms of your interests, skills and preferred work environments. Self-Assessment also helps you understand your strengths and weaknesses, values and beliefs which will set a foundation for career planning.

There are resources on the CareerZone Online Resource Centre for Brock students looking to start their career planning! You can access the CareerZone Online Resource Centre at www.careerzone.brocku.ca. After you log in with your student campus ID go to Career Services->Online Resource Centre->Career Assessments. There you will find some great resources such as TypeFocus and Career Cruising to get you started!

TypeFocus helps you answer the questions “who am I, really?” and provides you with four ‘type factor’ preferences:

Introvert/Extrovert

Sensing/Intuitive

Thinking/Feeling

Judging/Perceiving

Career Cruising is a career exploration tool that matches different careers based on your interests, skills and learning style assessments. It also provides details about specific jobs such as salary and education qualifications.

The results from these assessments can give you peace of mind that there is something out there in the world for you. Getting to know yourself with Self Assessments will help you understand what the right career is for you!

Alysha-Lynn Kooter, Career Assistant, 2nd Year Con-Ed Visual Art and English