The Four Core Comonents you MUST consider in a Career Change Assessment

You decided you need to change your profession; a career change assessment may be the answer. Especially if you have no clue what you want to get into.

It is broken down into 3 major parts:

1. Your Values
2. Your Passions
3. Your Skills
4. Your Personality

If you are pondering a change, get a pencil and paper out (or copy/paste) and write the answers to the following:

YOUR VALUES

“Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.”
~ Dalai Lama

Your values determine what is most important to you and you. If you work at a career that you know are not congruent with your values, you are wasting your time. Of course temporary conditions apply, but once the day is over, it's gone forever, so choose wisely.

Identifying your values is also important because it give you focus and clarity. It eliminates the other 500 thousand careers in your life that could keep you from the things you really want. So it can be a compass to keep you in the direction you want to go.

So, take a few minutes and ask yourself:

• "What are you looking for in a career change?"
  It could be salary, contribution, flexibility of working wherever you want, or with certain kinds of people. Don't over think; just list them in any particular order.
• Once you've done that, prioritize what is most important to you. Some will stand out and be non-negotiable, that's great! The career change assessment is helping with your progress.
• If you are really stuck and can't think of what you want, then take a look at a partial list of values to job your brain. It can help you clarify what you are looking out of life, not just a career.

YOUR PASSIONS

"Find out what you love to do as young as possible and spend the rest of your life figuring out how to make money from it."
~ Unknown

The next part of the career change assessment is to determine what you love and like to do. There are activities that energize you when you do them. After all, if you are going to spend a daily effort, on a career, you may want to find one that uplifts you. Here are questions to jog your mind.

• Do you like to work alone? Or with other people?
• Do you like to build or create things? Analyze data?
• Are there industries you enjoy working in?
• Are you looking to help people? By teaching? Listening? Leading?

YOUR SKILLS

"The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it."
~ Johann Wolfgang von Gothe

I rank skill to have lower importance for a career change assessment. That is because you can upgrade your skills very rapidly if your passions and values aligned. Sure there will be a learning curve, and corporate america usually expects you to "wait your turn" and "pay your dues." However, if you master a skill and deliver solid results, you do NOT have to wait your turn, but you do need to deliver higher value output than usual.

It is still worth going over what activities you like doing. After all, the better you are at something, the more valuable you are translates to a higher income. Also, it gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment, which increases job satisfaction.

So, here are several questions to consider when evaluating what tasks you will enjoy doing:

• In the past what activities did you enjoy doing most?
• Which activities did you enjoy the least?
• Which tasks got you excited? Which ones drained you?
• Do you enjoy constantly learning new things, or prefer mastering fewer skills?

In addition to finding what skills you enjoy, think about which skills will transfer well to other careers.

YOUR PERSONALITY

The last component of a career change assessment is your personality.

Meyers-Briggs is the most popular personality assessment tool in career change centers. It applies Carl Jung's theory which categorizes people in 8 different personality types: extroverts, introverts, thinking, feeling, sensing, intuitive, judging, and perceptive.

It evaluates differences in personality traits. How you engage (Extrovert/Introvert), decision making (Thinking/Feeling), life choices and(Judging/Perceiving) and how you perceive (Sensing/Intuition).

The result is a 4 letter code of your top 4 along with a number to determine relative strength.

My personality is ENTP, where I am a strong Extrovert, Intuitive, and slightly expressed Thinking and Perceiving personality. My careers that 'match' are in Education, Engineering, Science, Information Systems, Counseling, and Business. Seems like an accurate match for me, after all I have worked as a software developer, love teaching and build businesses.

For a free, 'quick and dirty' personality quiz, go HERE. Once you take the test, you can see the careers that are associated to your personality type. This is by no means exhaustive, or even very accurate. All this can do is help you brainstorm careers that may "align well" with your personality.

Taking a career change assessment can help find an ideal career for you. Again, the four key components are your values, passions, skills and personality. Analyzing each component will give you a head start on what kind of career you may be interested in. If you are really stuck, you may want to consider getting career counseling for ideas.

Didn't your teachers just ask you, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" in grade school?


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