Step 1 The Career Assessment Process
Discovering Who You Are

1. Links to each of the 5 Career Assessment Tools
2. A brief description of each one
3. Who created it
4. How it can benefit you
5. Why you can trust the results of these tests

1. YOUR WORK STYLE PREFERENCES
– the way you approach and handle the work itself. According to Dr. John Holland, retired psychologist from Johns Hopkins University, there are 6 of these preferences: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional.

Dr. Holland's theory has been used for the past 50 years. He says that one of these areas will be dominant in the way we live our lives, and function in the workplace.

Here you will learn more about each of these 6 Work–Life Preferences.

2. YOUR WORK VALUES
– what you value most about work, in terms of your preferred work settings, and how you like to interact with people.

Your work values give you important clues as to the kind of work and work conditions you'd do well in.

This inventory, created by Dr. Donald Super, (1910–1994) an internationally recognized career development specialist, is now a classic used in the Career Assessment process.

No one has been able to evaluate and describe personality type better, than this American mother–daughter team – Katherine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. It's a fascinating and highly accurate look, into how we see the world.

It's worth getting to know your personality type on the Myers–Briggs Personality Scale. You will not only understand yourself better, but also your family, friends, and your co–workers.

4. YOUR CENTRAL MOTIVATIONS
–what makes you tick – yes, usually it's hidden in plain view. Your Central Motivations are the passion or energy behind your interest in something. They are what get you excited or make you enthusiastic about doing the work you love.

Your motivations will tell you what kind of work you should seek out. The good news is that there are many different jobs that need the same motivations. Your jobs may change, but your motivations will remain the same throughout your life.

If you are in a job that you love, you may not know why you got into it. But you will know after you finish this assessment.

If you are in a job that you can't stand, then you will also have a good idea why it doesn't fit you, after you've done this assessment.

You must be motivated to enjoy the work you do, otherwise you'll come to hate it, become bored with it, and feel like you are wasting your life.

You will spend at least a third of your life on the job, why not do something you like?

5. THE MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES YOU FAVOR
– In school we were rewarded for two types of Intelligences:

1. having a logical, orderly or mathematical mind
2. having a linguistic mind or a sense of how to use language, so that you could string words together into clear, grammatically correct and meaningful prose.

Then, in 1983, along came neuropsychologist, Dr. Howard Gardner with his Theory of Multiple Intelligences, and the world of education hasn't been the same since.

Now we know that there are at least six more types of intelligence that we use all the time. Research has shown that we will develop a preference for using one or more of these, and the others will play a secondary, but nonetheless important roll, in how we think and solve problems in our everyday life and worklife.

• You are doing a self–assessment. No one knows you better than yourself. You are your own best judge of what suits you.
• No career assessment can tell you something you do not already believe, or know about yourself. All any assessment can do, is point out your gifts, talents, preferences and abilities.
• If a career assessment tells you something that seems to go against what you know about yourself, then it may not be true for you.
• You need to trust your own self–awareness before accepting the outcome of any assessment.
• All the career assessments on this site have strong research and many years of professional use behind them.

• All of the assessment results are based on your own best judgment of your preferences. This is a most reliable way of testing, because you know yourself best.

In Summary. . .

What we are doing here, is confirming, gathering, and organizing the information you know about yourself, and building it into a useful data profile of you.

These career tests are giving you an opportunity to think about yourself in an organized way.

Once you have this information printed out and at hand, you will feel more confident and clearer about the decision–making process, and be well on your way to finding a Best Career Match.

Links to Step 1 - The 5 Career Tests on This Site

1. Discovering Your Work Style Preferences

• Your Work Style Preferences Overview
• Work Style Preferences Inventory
• Work Style Preferences Descriptions

2. Choosing Your Work Values

• Your Work Values Overview
• The Work Values Inventory
• Sam's Story
• Karen's Story

3. Identifying Your Personality Style

• Your Personality Type - An Overview
• The Personality Test
• FAQS On Personality Type

4. Pinpointing What Motivates You

• Your Central Motivators - An Overview
• Your Central Motivations Quiz
• Central Motivations Descriptions

5. Making Your Multiple Intelligences Work For You

• Multiple Intelligences - An Overview
• Multiple Intelligences Inventory
• Multiple Intelligences Descriptions
• 60 Ways to Boost Your Intelligences
• The Quick Job Analysis Guide
• Career Chart

Links to Step 2 - Career Exploration

Getting Started - Opening the Door to Exploring New Careers

• Step 2 - An Overview

9 Frequently Asked Questions on Job Searching

• Get the Answers Here

How to Do Job Research - Your Search Tool Links

Familiarize Yourself With the Major Occupational Groups

Links to Step 3 - Getting into the Nitty Gritty

How to Do Job Searching

• Step 3 - An Overview

Paper Research

• Help For Doing Paper Researching

Online Research

• Help For Doing PC Researching

People Research Links

• Help For Doing People Researching
• How to Prepare for the Information Interview
• 20 Interview Questions for Informational Interviews
• Sample Phone Scripts for Information Interviews
• Writing the Interview Thank You Letter

Participation Research Links

• Help For Doing Participation Researching
• Open Houses in the Workplace &at Schools
• Job Shadowing
• 21 Sample Job Shadows in the Workplace
• Temping & Volunteering as Participation Research
• 50 Basic Questions Checklist For Job Researching

Links to Step 4 - Taking Care of Your Career

Ways to Make Yourself More Valuable to Employers

• Managing Your Career
• Taking Care of Your Career
• Arriving in Your New Career