Career Exploration
In Career Exploration, we will see how your skills, values and interests match the world of decently-paying work. I'll guide you to identify many potential job titles and then winnow them to a few that you can research in depth. I’ll encourage you to keep at least one dream job and one pragmatic job on the list of the final four.
During the self-assessment phase, you will have created a one-page profile of your interests, personality style, values and skills, and what you want from your employer. I’ll help you distill your findings into a basic message (sometimes called an "elevator speech.") This provides a succinct way to explain what you are looking for during Informational Interviews and networking.
I’ll teach you how to use websites to learn about expectations, salary and educational requirements. Web research is important, but talking to people is the heart of this phase. I love to connect people, and I’ll enjoy helping you locate professionals for Informational Interviews as well as appropriate professionals groups for career exploration.
Self-Assessment
The core of the first phase, self-assessment, is a systematic reflection of yourself as a professional. This is the time to clarify what you really want in a new career based on your key interests, personality type, values, skills and the characteristics of your ideal employer.
As an outcome, you will create a one-page Self-Assessment Profile Summary of five key interests, passions, values, skills and employer characteristics.
In addition, it’s a time to reflect on who or what in your life will provide meaningful support during the stress of a career change.
Career Assessment Tests
I carry out assessment by combining informal discussion, exercises that I’ve designed, and formal career assessment tools. We usually select from two to four of the following formal assessment tools which I am qualified to administer:
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is an extremely popular, well-tested tool to identify your psychological type preference. The report identifies which of the 16 type profiles you match and the career choices that are frequently satisfying for your type.
Strong Interest Inventory is a popular computer-based career planning tool that compares your answers with the answers of thousands of successful professionals in hundreds of careers. You will receive a comprehensive report that includes the top 10 occupations that match your interests.
ValueSearch by Mark Guterman is a cross-culturally based card sort process that will help you determine the values that you and your employer must share for a satisfactory match.
SkillScan is an interactive card sort that will help you identify your natural strengths and key transferable skills. As a result, we will identify your top three skill areas, such as Management, Mental Creative, Humanitarian, Realistic, etc.
Strengthsfinder2.0. When you take this on-line assessment, you will identify your top five talents to develop into career strengths. Tom Rath developed this relatively new assessment based on the works of Dr. Donald Clifton, the father of strength psychology. The team at Gallup surveyed 10 million people and identified 34 positive talents correlated with productive, engaging work.