Getting to know yourself

In order to build a vision of what you want to be when you grow up you first need to know who you are now. To some this may sound like a very new age idea, looking inward, but it is simply a very practical thing to do before setting forth to create the career that will work best for you. Before you bake a cake you always make sure you have the right ingredients. Building a career is no different. You need the right ingredients. The exercise of “getting to know yourself” is called ‘self assessment.’ There are numerous ways to go about this including personality inventories (like the Myers-Briggs indicator); skills inventories; and reflection exercises. I included a link in the useful web sites section of this site called The Testing Room that has resources to get you started.

When completing your self assessment it is extremely important to be totally honest with yourself and to be objective as possible. This can be quite difficult so you may need to solicit the help of others who know you well. Friends, family, co-workers and colleagues can often identify your strengths and weaknesses more readily than you can. We can often be blind to some of own traits. If you choose to ask others for help be sure not to react immediately to their input. Our first instinct may lead us to be defensive. This is not constructive. Ask questions to be sure you understand what they are telling you and then take time to reflect before making a judgment on the input.

The goal of self assessment is to create an inventory of your employability skills, your personal strengths and weakness, your work preferences, your values and work style. With this information you can do a number of things. If you already know what you want to do as a career you can compare your current skills, knowledge and abilities to that which is required of the certain profession you’ve chosen. From this comparison you can identify where you need to improve and fill in gaps to help you reach that goal.

If you are unsure of what you want to do you can compare your skills and preferences to potential careers to help you figure out where you best fit. For instance if you do not enjoy working independently and focusing on detail you may not want a job as a data entry clerk.

Self awareness is a key for career success, in any career. The exercise of self assessment is an on going exercise that you should never view as complete. Most organizations have yearly performance reviews of their employees. This is an ideal time to revisit your self assessment and see how things have improved and changed for you and to apply this new learning to your career plan. The more you know about where you are the better you can plan for where you want to go.