Career Self-Assessment

When you search for a career, review your interests, skills, values, and personality. There are many assessment surveys that can help you identify these traits. The career counselor's office at your school or institution is an excellent resource for such surveys. The Internet is replete with many good surveys that are available to you at no cost.

As you work through these surveys, keep a copy of the results for each survey that you complete. You should then use these results to explore careers on this site. Keep in mind that the results from surveys vary greatly. The following key to linking what you discover from the surveys to searching for careers is meant to be a rough guideline. We also provide a few links to sites that offer free surveys.

Interests Skills Most interest-assessment surveys indicate your Holland type. You may use your Holland codes to search for careers in the Career Matching Assistant. Links to Interests Assessment Surveys: The Career Key - Find a career that matches your abilities and personality. Most surveys will help you map your skills into general work activities such as communicating, coordinating, performing technical activities, reasoning and decision making, information/data processing, coordinating/managing/advising, administering, and performing physical/manual work activities. You can search for careers by the above skill clusters in the Career Matching Assistant. Link to Skills Assessment Survey: Work Skills Profiler - Identify your skills and match skills important to you with occupations to find out what type of training you may need Values Personalities Surveys on personal values will give you insight into what you value the most in a career. Understanding your values will help you select a career with a good match to the things you feel most strongly about. Read about and further investigate careers from your values perspective. Link to Values Assessment Surveys: Learning Styles Assessment Identification of your unique personality traits will help you identify careers that fit your personality, giving you the most likelihood of personal and professional growth. As you explore careers and find the ones that interest you the most, you should devote more time to learning about them and evaluating the match between your personality traits and the careers. Link to a Personality Assessment Survey: Keirsey Personality Site