Self Assessment:  Know Yourself

The process of exploring and identifying one’s potential career directions starts with self-evaluation. Career counselors can help you recognize your interests, skills, values, and help you set your career goals. Knowing yourself is the first step necessary in finding a satisfying career.

Interest and Work Preference Surveys: To help you further identify career areas related to your interest and work styles, the Career Development Center offers standardized interest surveys including the Strong Interest Inventory, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and the Self Directed Search (SDS).  These inventories  are administered and evaluated by a trained career counselor during your career  counseling session. Interest surveys can help you focus more specifically on career fields, occupations, and work environments where you may find job satisfaction. They may confirm those career fields that you have been considering. They will not, however, tell you what you "should" be.  Only you can determine that! 

Participating in our workshop "Making Major and Career Decisions" may be helpful as you begin to explore and understand your career interests.

FOCUS - This NEW online career assessment enables you to take a self-guided tool for career exploration.  FOCUS helps you explore your strengths, interests and skills and is a valuable tool as a first step to major and career decision making.

How Can I Use FOCUS?

• Obtain the user registration access code,  (call x6370 to obtain the code for Purchase students or stop by the CDC). 
• Once you have obtained the registration access code go to the Student Log-in/Registration Page to create your account.
• Once you have completed the assessments BE SURE to make an appointment to meet with a career counselor to go over the results.  Remember, no single assessment can give you THE answer to your “what do I want to be” question.  Career planning is a process!
• Once you have created an account with FOCUS you can log back in at anytime to continue to take assessments, check your results, and explore majors and careers.
• FOCUS allows you to save a Personal Portfolio, where you can save careers and majors of interest. 

FOCUS is brought to you in partnership with the
Academic Advising Center.

The following websites can allow you explore on your own:

(The additional sites below provide a free mini-report and may offer more expanded reports for a fee)
The Occupational Information Network  - Learn about occupations, match your skills and more.
The Keirsey Temperament Sorter (based on the MBTI that students can take for free at CDC)- Information on personality gifts and temperament types.
www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp - Jung Typology Test  
www.acinet.org/acinet/skills/default.aspx - Skills Profiler from Career One Stop 
www.testingroom.com - 3 assessments – Values, Interest Personality

Updated 8/11