National Application Center :: self assessment
Introduction
Most experts suggest that you should review your interests, skills, values, and personality when searching for a career.
There are numerous assessment surveys that can help you identify your interests, skills, values, and personality. 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 and are meant to be rough guidelines. For interest assessment, we offer the Career Key by Dr. Lawrence K. Jones, PhD. We also provide additional links to free self-assessment surveys.
- Interests
Most interests-assessment surveys indicate your Holland type, or code. You may use your Holland codes to search for careers in the Career Finder. You can use the My Interest Finder to discover how your interests relate to the working world. - Skills
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 Finder. - Values
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. You can use the My Work Values Finder to identify the work values that are important to you, and explore related occupations. - Personalities
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 those careers and evaluating the match between your personality traits and the careers.
