Building a strong foundation of individual knowledge is a worthwhile investment in your future. A clear understanding of self will simplify your career search, pave the way for more rewarding interactions with family, friends, and colleagues, and will enhance your ability to collaborate and lead.

Actions:

• Use our career coaching service for a supported approach to understanding your own preferences and how they relate to careers.
• Build your individual knowledge using activities from the range of suggestions below.

• Identity

  We each possess fixed characteristics that are part of our bodies, our background, and our ways of operating in the world. Awareness of our own identities can provide very useful context for our own preferences and behaviors, and in turn connects powerfully to our understanding of environments and interactions with others.

  Actions:

  • Watch a video on the Pamela Hays ADDRESSING framework. (transcript)

• Values

  Dr. R. Kelly Crace and Dr. Duane Brown, creators of the Life Values Inventory, define values as the lenses through which you view yourself and the world. Values drive your decisions and guide your behavior. Values become clearer over time as we have more life experiences. These values may also change based on our life experiences and as we prioritize what is important to us. Values are impacted by outside influence like our families, cultures, environments, and experiences, so it is natural that these changes would occur.

  Actions:

  • Take the Life Values Inventory to clarify your top three values in work/academics, important relationships, and leisure/community activities.

• Skills

  As you think about your skills, remember that you have both technical skills and emotional intelligence skills—for example teamwork, problem solving, and leadership. You’ll find that though many roles have technical requirements, all employers are looking for emotional intelligence skills.

  Actions:

  • Use a tool like the O*NET OnLine skills descriptions to create a list of the things you can do. Get even more detailed by adding the abilities and work activities lists. Use the Skills Quadrant activity to further evaluate skills in relation to your interests and strengths.

• Interests

  Interests are the things you like. They are the activities and subject matter you’re naturally attracted to and enjoy. Interests are related to but different than your skills and often a catalyst for superior skill development.

  A common framework used to clarify interests is the Holland Code, created by John Holland. He divided interests into six categories, with most people having a set of two or three interest themes.

  Realistic: The realistic category includes people who are interested in things you can see and touch. They tend to get fulfillment from creating with their hands and physical tasks—for example, building computer networks or completing tasks outdoors.

  Artistic: The artistic category includes people who have interests in self-­‐‑expression, art, culture, and communication. They find satisfaction in the creation of new things and are energized by being around other creative people.

  Social: People within the social category are interested in other people. They thrive in helping and are concerned about the welfare and improvement of others. Their reward comes from building relationships and helping others solve problems.

  Enterprising: Leadership, the power of persuasion, and entrepreneurship are some of the interests you will find with those in the enterprising category. They are fulfilled in motivating and directing others to achieve a goal.

  Conventional: Data and organization are often interests of people within the conventional category. They take pride in being able to create systems and procedures to drive efficiencies. They also tend to be interested in numbers and what can be learned from numbers.

  Actions:

  • Use the My Next Move interest profiler to discover your Holland Code and see aligned career paths.
  • Use the O*NET OnLine skills, abilities, and work activities lists referenced in the action section above. This time, look for what you LIKE instead of what you CAN DO. Reviewing the the work context, work styles, and work values lists will help you to find concrete language for the interests that are harder to communicate.

• Priorities

  Prioritizing a few factors that you want to guide your decision-making process helps you to focus energy into the best options. Some examples to get you thinking include family (desire to be with partners, parents, and children), salary (aligning pay and benefits with quality of life), and location.

  Actions:

  • Use the 5 whys technique to clarify your career goals
  • Understand your decision-making factors by naming them. Give your list a powerful name like “dealbreakers”, “non-negotiables” or “killer questions” and use these criteria to define a right-sized target market for your search.
  • Choose a research tool for researching and comparing locations of interest.