No matter where you are in your education or career, you'll benefit if you take time to consider what you like, what you're good at, and whether your direction is making the best use of your talents.
What career is right for me? What should I major in?
Self-assessment is a way to learn more about yourself: what you like, what you don't like and how you tend to react to certain situations. Learning about yourself is the first step in finding a good fit of career and major. Assessments are tools to help you explore your skills, interests, values and other traits. These traits can then be used to match a broad list of careers across industries.
Explore:
Aptitudes |
Values |
Skills |
Personality |
Interests
Assessing your values, aptitudes, personality, interests and skills now will help later when it's time to change or choose a major, career or program of study. Don't get tied up in knots over not having a major selected. Part of going to college is to help find what interests you and what does not. The exposure of college also helps you validate skills and aptitudes. We usually like the things we are good at or that we think we are good at. For instance, I love to sing and dance. My love of music is right up there with the things I like to do. Can I aspire to a career in music? Should I try out for America Idol? Learn to assess yourself. We all have strengths and weaknesses. Part of going to college and completing course work helps us learn more about ourselves.
You should remember that self-assessment may help you determine your job skills, personality style and career interests. These indicators and are not absolute determinants of which career or program of study is best for you. We provide this information as a resource guide to get you started.
If you are already enrolled in college, set up an appointment with your advisor, counselor or mentor. They can help you assess your strengths and weaknesses and suggest opportunities based on your interests. They'll talk to you about setting goals and reaching them. Over time, you should work toward getting a handle on your aspirations, opportunities and challenges. Document them. This is not a once in a lifetime decision or process. Assessing yourself is like taking a snapshot, which you can do every year or once every couple of years. Over time we all change, acquire new skills and adjust our work values. Our interests change as a natural byproduct of the pathways we have followed.
As we learn more about ourselves, re-assessing is an important element of planning. Life and circumstances change, especially as we age. It is important to take the first step and to follow through. Be honest and open with yourself. That does not mean you should be pessimistic or negative about weaknesses that can't be overcome, rather focus on your strengths. Self-assessing will help you identify where you are, and it will help you navigate where you want to go. In the end, it is about finding what will make you happy and productive.