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.