A career self-assessment is an important step in your job search regardless of whether you’re employed in a career you enjoy or are eagerly seeking to make a move to another career. Taking the time to assess your current position and think about your ideal career increases your chances of career satisfaction in the future.

Reasons to Self-Assess

A career self-assessment helps you pinpoint and communicate your interests, skills, achievements and values, all of which are critical to achieving a successful career. It can move you from an unclear career goal to a clear one.

Performing a career self-assessment can help you:

  • select your career or confirm your current career choice
  • explore career alternatives
  • make a career or industry change
  • choose appropriate education and training options
  • increase your job satisfaction
  • determine your most suitable level of employment
  • set your expected salary range
  • outline a suitable job location
  • highlight the job hour hours that would best suit your personal circumstances

Key Questions in a Self-Assessment

There are three key components involved in a career self-assessment:

  • skills and work experience
  • personal characteristics
  • life experiences

ACCES Employment provides a strategic list of questions for each of these components to help make the career self-assessment process clear and effective.

The Skills and Work Experience component of a career self-assessment answers the following questions:

  • What can you do?
  • What are your skills?
  • What are your work experiences?

The Personal Characteristics component of a career self-assessment answers the following questions:

  • Who are you as a person?
  • What are your personal strengths?
  • What are your values?

The Life Experiences component of a career self-assessment answers the following questions:

  • What kind of work environment suits you?
  • What work hours suit your life circumstances?
  • What salary range are you looking for?
  • How much responsibility would you like?
  • What work constraints do you have?

Career self-assessment tools use a variety of ways to collect your information, including checklists, inventories and a variety of targeted questions. Watch ACCES Employment’s short online webinar and download our career self-assessment worksheets to get started today.