One of the first questions people ask me is “can you help me figure out what I want to do?”  Well, I can help, but you’re the one who’s got to do most of the work.  Go to Google and type in “career assessments.”  In .11 seconds you get 281,000 results, the very first page of which gives you links to various sites laden with assessment exercises, some of them entirely free of charge.  How useful are they?  How valid are they? You won’t know until you try.

But if you’re looking for an assessment that is accessible, remarkably easy to self-administer and score, incredibly accurate and perceptive, and takes only 10 minutes to do, I’d recommend picking up a book titled “CAREER MATCH…Connecting Who You Are with What You’ll Love to Do”, by Shoya Zichy with Ann Bidou.  The book, published by Amacom, the imprint of the American Management Association, is all that and more.

What can you learn about yourself from “CAREER MATCH”?  What are your natural work-related strengths?  What’s your ideal work environment?  Your ideal boss?  What careers attract you?  What are you like as a leader, and as a team player?  What are your personality’s challenges?  What’s your job search style and your interviewing style?  How can you get along with other, very different, styles at work?  What’s your salary negotiating and investment style?  It’s all here, in one superb book!

My suggestion?  Buy the book — it’s available on Amazon.com — take the 10 minute exercise, and then let’s work together, using the results, to get the very most out of what you now know about yourself.  Can I help you figure out what you want to do?  It’s a lot easier with this information under your belt!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 4:44 pm and is filed under Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.