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How to make Career Decisions through Self-Assessment?
Choosing a career is one of the most important decisions that you will make in your lifetime. By aligning your career choice with your interests, natural abilities and highest values, you'll be on the road to get what you most want, and enjoy it to the boot.

Self-assessment is the first step of the career planning process. It is the process of gathering information about yourself, in order to make an informed career decision. A self-assessment should include a look at the following: values, interests, personality and skills.

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, computer programming, teaching.

The most common refrain among students is this one: "I don't know what I want to do. Is there a test or something that can tell me what career is right for me?" The answer is no. You canÕt take a test that will, as if by magic, tell you what to do with the rest of your life. You can, however, use a combination of self-assessment tools that will aid you in your decision.

Self-Assessment is an opportunity to ask the question, "who am I?" and begin creating a professional identity. It is a self-evaluation, defining, and clarification process. Self-assessment is a process that will occur periodically throughout your life.

Value Inventories

Your values are possibly the most important things to consider when you're choosing an occupation. If you don't take your values into account when planning your career, there's a good chance you'll dislike your work and, therefore, not succeed in it. For example, someone who needs to have autonomy in his work would not be happy in a job where every action is decided by someone else.

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?

Personality Inventories

Many personality inventories used in career planning are based on a theory by psychologist Carl Jung. He divided people into eight personality types-extroverts, introverts, thinking, feeling, sensing, intuitive, judging, and perceptive. Career counsellors often use results from tests based on Jungian Personality Theory to help clients choose careers. Career counsellors contend that those of a particular personality type are better suited to certain careers. An obvious example would be that an introvert would not do well in a career that requires public speaking. However, personality alone shouldn't be used to predict whether you would succeed in a particular career. A personality inventory should be used in conjunction with other inventories, such as those that look at interests and values.

Career development practitioners most frequently administer the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) for the assessment of personality. It measures differences in traits between individuals. It looks at how one relate to the world (Extroversion vs. Introversion), perceives information (Sensing vs. Intuition), makes decisions (Thinking vs. Feeling), and manage your life (Judging vs. Perceiving). When the test is scored, the individual is given a four-letter code, like ENFJ (Extroversion Intuitive Feeling Judging), indicating his or her preferences.

Each preference is also assigned a number to show how strong that preference is. However, career counselling is not a developed field in India and these tests are not easily available. Instead, you can read a book, What Type Am I?: Discover Who You Really Are by Renee Baron which can help you how to discover your Personality Type and get a better understanding of the MBTI.

Renee Baron takes on the complexity of the sixteen personality types and makes them accessible, so you can comprehend them, and find your own. This book will help you to assess your individual preferences in four basic areas: how you relate to the world, take in information, make decisions, and manage your life. You can take quick 20-question quizzes for each of the four categories. (Do you dislike routine and repetition? Do you prefer to finish one project before starting another, or does that not matter to you? Do people seek you out for warmth and nurturing?)

Whether you are a duty seeker or an action seeker, a knowledge seeker or an ideal seeker. The book is an eminently useful step in helping you appreciate your strengths and apply them to work, and life.

You're then given tons of tips for getting along in this world. ESFPs are warned that they should not get involved in too many activities, lest they forget their responsibilities. INTJs need to learn to be more flexible, and are sometimes best off working for themselves type, and use the knowledge to enrich your own life. Here is information about individual strengths and weaknesses along with suggestions for personal growth and awareness.

Skills Assessment

When deciding what field to enter, you need to determine what skills you possess. You should look at what you're good at, as well as what you enjoy doing. You may be very adept at a particular skill, but despise every second you spend at it. Generally speaking, though, you usually enjoy what you do well.

While you're assessing your skills, you should also consider the time you are willing to spend on acquiring more advanced or new skills. A question you could ask yourself is this-if a career holds all the qualities I find appealing but it takes X years to prepare for it, would I be willing and able to make this time commitment?

Skills and Achievements exercise: Here's an exercise that asks you to organize your skills into three groups: Specialized, Interpersonal/Communications, and General.

Skill is defined as the ability to do something well, especially as a result of experience. Most skills are transferable to other work settings and can be grouped in many ways. One way is to show functional skills of working with people, data or information, and things or objects. Another way is to look at intellectual, aptitudinal, creative leadership and problem-solving skills.

Employers are interested in knowing which skills you can bring to their organization. Examine your jobs, both paid and unpaid, as well as your academic and personal activities to determine your skills. You also may wish to review the skills as action verbs in your Resume. Do not underestimate the skills obtained in a "liberal" education. Examples: oral/written communication through essay and report writing, presentations and seminars; organization of time by having to meet deadlines and of ideas in order to present material logically; research by searching and locating information; problem-solving by analyzing and finding alternate solutions to a problem.

For the exercise in this section, organize your skills into the following three groups. The first group will be specialized skills required in a particular job, e.g., analyzing statistics, debugging computer programs, designing machinery, refereeing sports, repairing equipment, appraising fitness levels.

The second group will comprise your communication/interpersonal skills, e.g., writing, mediating, training, liaisoning, hosting, motivating.

The third group will include those general skills needed in most jobs, e.g., initiating, improving, resolving, compiling, organizing, scheduling. Choose 6 skills for each category. Identify if you would like to use that skill in future work (L) and if you currently have a sufficient level of proficiency (P) for employment.

Select the 5 skills you most want to use from the 18 you listed above. Give a good example of the circumstances when you used each skill and the outcome of your action. These can wonderful insights for your future career.

An important key to a future direction often lies in your past experiences. It is especially important to recognize positive experiences or accomplishments which you have already achieved. They are the ones most likely to suggest vocational areas that you may wish to pursue in the future.

They are also the ones that employers are interested in hearing about.

Compile a list of your previous experiences. Include previous employment, volunteer and academic experiences, significant recreational activities, or other important roles you have played.

Examples:

Volunteer Fundraiser for Helping Children agency, Leader of school study group, Contributor to school newspaper, Creator of project for Science display, Sports Monitor for races etc, Organizer of Diwali party, in your neighbourhood, Prizewinner in Math contest. Then, answer the following questions about each of these experiences.

1. What did I do?

2. What did I learn?

3. What did I enjoy?

4. What did I dislike?

5. What did I accomplish?

6. What did others commend me for?

In all your past experiences, personal accomplishments or achievements reveal areas of personal strength that are important to consider when you are developing your vocational direction. This list will also provide a useful reminder of those things that you will likely want to highlight during your job interview.

Begin to identify any themes or trends which reveal information about the subject matter of your achievements.

Do you find yourself:

- working with people, individuals or groups or both? (mentoring, negotiating, instructing, supervising, diverting, persuading, speaking-signalling, serving, helping, taking instructions, etc.)

- working with things (setting up, precision working, operating-controlling, driving-operating, manipulating, tending, feeding-off, bearing, handling, etc.)

- working with data (synthesizing, coordinating, analyzing, compiling, computing, copying, comparing, etc.)

- working with ideas (creating, designing, innovating, developing, self-expressing, etc.)

- working with any combination of the above

What abilities or skills did you repeatedly use?

Examine your achievements to determine what you were doing with the subject matter.

What circumstances frequently recur in your achievements?

a problem to solve?

a confronting test or challenge?

a cause to be served?

a crisis?

competition?

meeting the needs of other?

etc.

Here is an exercise on Skill Assessment: When you inventory your interests, abilities, aptitudes and values, you may find that you are skilled in areas in which you never thought you would be qualified. For example, a homemaker going out into the work force may have great business skills, such as managing money and doing several jobs at once. A homemaker may have skills in training, teaching and organization that had not been recognized as work skills. By thoroughly assessing your skills, and having confidence in your abilities, knowledge and skills, you may open up the doors to new opportunities.

Ask yourself:

1. Do I have something I'm naturally good at that can be applied to a certain kind of work?

2. What hobbies or activities do I enjoy?

3. Do I like to learn and do I know how to learn?

4. Am I competent in the basic academic skills and in listening and speaking?

5. Do I know how to market my skills?

Make a complete inventory of your skills. Next, express these skills in marketable and measurable terms.

Skills needed to succeed

To obtain a career and to keep a job, you need to understand the importance of acquiring marketable skills. In the past, good physical condition and a simple willingness to work was often enough to obtain a job, work for one employer for 25-30 years, then retire and receive a gold watch. This is no longer the case. Today's work place demands much more flexibility, adaptability and mobility.

Today's work place, and the work place of the 21st century, require the understanding of sophisticated equipment as well as being able to communicate with people. The work place of today is a high performance work place which requires workers who have a foundation in basic literacy and computational skills necessary to use knowledge and the personal qualities that make workers trustworthy.

When going through the self-assessment process it is also important to take into account other considerations that will influence your career choice. For example, you should consider your family responsibilities and your ability to pay for education or training. You also have to remember that self- assessment is the first step in the career planning process, not the last. After completing this phase, you must explore the options you have before you. With your self- assessment results in mind, you need to evaluate a variety of occupations to see if there's a match. Also, if you are interested in money as a work value assessment, that does not mean that you must go for that job, as you must also consider your interests and personality type.

Just because your self-assessment indicates that a particular occupation matches your interests, skills and values, doesn't mean it should be your choice. Similarly, just because your self-assessment doesn't indicate that a particular occupation is appropriate, doesn't mean you should discount it entirely. You just need to do some more research.