In This Chapter

Discovering your dream career, the career that will make you happiest, involves more than just figuring out what you want to do. Also important is discovering what you’ll be good at—determining what kind of work will best fit with your values, your temperament, and your interests. To accurately uncover who you are and what you want, self-assessment tests are invaluable.

Don’t worry, these tests aren’t like the ones you took in school. You won’t get a grade, and no matter what, you can’t fail! Best of all, these tests are easy and fun; let me explain.

First, what does self-assessment really mean? If you pick up The Collins English Dictionary, you’ll find self-assessment defined as “an evaluation of one’s own abilities and failings.” But that definition doesn’t really fit self-assessment for our purposes. Instead, let’s give self-assessment the more accurate definition psychologists use: an appraisal of one’s own personal qualities and traits. This type of self-assessment focuses on recognizing your strengths, not your weaknesses. It’s this self-assessment that can help you best uncover your dream career.

Self-assessments can provide you with all kinds of information about your hidden talents, personality characteristics, and interests. I would be willing to bet you’ll learn at least one thing about yourself that you didn’t know. Truth be told, you’ll probably learn dozens of things from taking the self-assessments in this book.

But don’t misunderstand, these assessments (or any assessment for that matter) will not lay out quick and easy answers about what you should or shouldn’t do with your life. However, by taking the information you’ll learn about yourself as a whole, and by using the guidance you’ll get in this book, you can more quickly and easily discover the path to your dream career.

The key thing to remember: Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. This translates to: don’t rely solely on one self-assessment test. That’s why this book is filled with information and direction to numerous self-assessments and exercises, so you’ll get as complete a picture as possible of who you are. Then you can determine what area of work will bring you the most overall satisfaction.

The following sections will highlight and provide an overview of the assessment tests contained in this book. They will also give you references to online assessments and books.

Dreams are sources of information. In this book, we want to tap into the dreams you had when you were young, the dreams that are hanging around still. These dreams can be keys to unlocking elements of what you want in your perfect career. Along with checking out your dreams, we also want to take a look at the different aspects of your life and see how satisfied you are right now.

Looking at how satisfied you are currently with the amount of money you make, the work you do, family and friendships, health and fitness, body/mind/spirit, work and living environments, and fun and recreation, is going to give us even more clues to what you may want instead! This is the next step in moving our dreams foreword in time, so we will ask you to create a vision statement for five years down the road. In summary, we take your dreams (past and future), compare them with your current state, and you are able to see the gap or distance between your ideal state and your present reality. This is called a GAP Analysis:

Here are some assessments for uncovering your dreams and looking at your life satisfactions:

Values are attitudes and beliefs you hold dear and will act upon—what’s most important to you in life. Despite what many people believe, it is possible to find a career that aligns work with your values. When you can do this, your work is much more rewarding because it fulfills your personal needs as well as your financial needs. You feel satisfied through and through.

The interesting thing about values, however, is that the values you have when you are 25 might not be the same values you have when you’re 35, 40, or even 50. This is just one of the reasons people grow disillusioned with their chosen careers and they start searching for a different line of work. Examining your values is something you should do regularly each year to see what’s changed and how you can adapt your work and lifestyle to match what’s important to you. The assessments in this book can help you do this.

Here are some values assessments you can check out:

An important part of self-assessment is pinpointing characteristics of your personality. Your personality is more than just how you define yourself. It’s the sum total of all of your qualities and traits. It’s a complex pattern that includes emotional characteristics, mental traits, and behaviors that make you uniquely you.

Some of your most important characteristics, the ones that can help direct you to your dream career, may not be the ones of which you’re aware. In fact, the human personality is so complex, hundreds of years of research have been devoted to understanding the way a person thinks, feels, and relates to others. Self-assessment testing can help you uncover your hidden behaviors and who you really are.

Here are some examples of personality assessments:

Do you know what motivates you? What makes you start your day with enthusiasm? Some motivations are based on needs that might change over time such as money, relationships, being recognized and respected, contributing to society, or spirituality. Other motivations may run deep, such as what we really value in our careers.

Your interests are another part of self-assessment that people often forget about. For decades, people chose careers without regard to their interests and hobbies. And because of that, many professionals never experienced sincere job satisfaction.

Yes, work is work. But you can also get paid for doing something you love. This area of self-assessment will help you determine what you really enjoy doing. What your favorite hobbies are or could be. It might come as a surprise to you to know that many leisure activities can be converted into profitable careers.

Self-assessments can also accurately gauge your skills. These skills include what you’ve learned from past work and life experiences. These skill sets are often placed in three categories:

Some examples of skills assessment tests include the following:

Getting a clear picture of your preferred lifestyle includes understanding how much money you want to make along with the type of balance you want to maintain between career and home life. How do you see yourself spending time after work or on weekends? What’s important to you in your life—relationships, leisure time, and fun, community involvement? This area of assessment is critical in directing your career choice. It takes into consideration all the other important aspects of your life.

Do we stay the same throughout our lives—absolutely not. For example, in your 30s, your career may take up more of your focus and time, but in your 60s and 70s you may want to have more leisure time and involvement in the community. It’s important to check in with yourself periodically to see whether your lifestyle preferences have changed and what implications that has on your career path.

What kind of work environment do you like? For example, do you like to work alone? Do you like to work with other people? Do you hate the idea of being confined to an office? How you’ll answer questions like these will help you uncover your preferred work environment and help you determine in which career areas you’ll be most comfortable and happiest. It also helps you to narrow down your search of organizations that fit your criteria for a good place to work.

All of the assessments included in this book have been designed specifically to be clear and easy to use. Each of the tests is unique and is structured differently. For some, you’ll answer two dozen questions; in others you’ll pick and choose interests and skills with which you identify. And still in others, you’ll take a survey asking your preferences for people, things, job, and lifestyle content. No test has more than 100 questions. And no test should take you longer than 30 minutes to complete. Where applicable, you will be instructed to include your test results in the Career Profile Map in Appendix A. This will allow you to keep all your results together for your reference and reflection.

With the varied range of assessments, you will have a clear profile of who you are and what a good career/job match is for you. We will also give you many other resources online that are available for free and for purchase.

Most important, when you start taking the self-assessment tests in this book, and the ones you’ll be directed to online, it’s important to keep all of your results in perspective. For example:

We’ve tried to make it easy for you to get the right perspective on your self-assessment test results and to make taking a “misstep” like misinterpreting your results next to impossible.

We’ve organized the second half of this book into sections to help you specifically understand and put to use the culmination of your test results. You’ll learn how to take your assessment profiles and match them to different career areas, how to narrow those areas down into job preferences, and how to discover what you need to know about each one. The result is that you can make an informed decision and choose a career path that is most right for you!

Each time you take an assessment, you will be asked to write your results in your Career Profile Map located in Appendix A. This is your own personal career map to guide your decisions about jobs, occupations, and careers that match up with what you really want. It also helps to keep all these assessment results straight!