Virtual Career Center

Self Assessment Tools

Discover new career possibilities and enhance self-understanding by performing a self-assessment. There are many tools and resources that can assist you in matching your personality, interests and skills to particular professions.

No one knows your story better than you do, so evaluate your successes, skill development and experience regularly, wherever you are on your career path. Some initial questions to ask yourself:

• What are your areas of expertise?
• What recent projects have you enjoyed most?
• How much of your work is involved with projects in which you learn new skills and have a sense of achievement?
• What would you like to accomplish in the next year? What would you like to learn?
• What is important to you in your next position - money? And what else?
• How big a change are you willing to make? Will you stick to the process to make the change?

How can the Alumni Career Center help you identify your skills and interests and enhance your self-understanding?

• Career Interest Assessment
  Offered in the group format, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and the Strong Interest Inventory and Skills Confidence Inventory provide information about preferred careers and work environments.
  
  
• Career Management Tips & Tools — Visit the sections on Transferable Skills and decision making and goal setting.
  
  
• Career Advising
  A career advisor can help you look at past accomplishments and future goals. Career advising is a feature of the Alumni Career Center's Comprehensive Service Package, available for an annual fee of $160 to Alumni Association members. An option to meet one time for one hour with a career adviser for a $40 fee is also available to Alumni Association members.
  
  

• Are You A Corporate Refugee? A Survival Guide for Downsized, Disillusioned and Displaced Workers, by Ruth Luban
  
  
• Do What You Are, by Paul D. Tieger & Barbara Barron-Tieger
  
  
• It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now: How to Create Your Second Life After 40, by Barbara Sher
  
  
• The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success, by Nicholas Lore
  
  
• Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, by William Bridges
  
  
• What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles
  
  
• Who's Running Your Career? Creating Stable Work in Unstable Times, by Caela Farren, Ph.D.
  
  

• The Keirsey Temperament Sorter — assesses personality preferences in various occupational areas.
  Keirsey.com
  
  
• O*NET, The Occupational Information Network — skills assessment, followed by occupation lists and analysis on the fit with your interests, skills, aptitudes, values and work activities.
  online.onetcenter.org
  
  
• The Riley Guide — a gateway site that can take you from self-assessment to career exploration and job leads.
  www.rileyguide.com
  
  
• The Job Hunter's Bible — an Online manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers.
  www.jobhuntersbible.com