Using Career Assessment To Your Advantage
Contributed by Jay Schroyer
It’s almost appalling to see how many first-year undergraduates fresh from high school are lumped into the major category of “undecided” or “undeclared” You’ve had four years of high school, advice from parents, advisors, and friends and you still don’t know what to do with your life. It’s not uncommon, but it’s also no excuse for not taking up the reigns of your future. Many sight immaturity and naivety as the source of most eighteen-year-old college student’s apathy and undecidedness, but it seems to me that a majority of it can be traced back to a lack of evaluation. If someone had sat me down early in my college years and asked me what I was interested in, I’m not sure if I ever would have gone on to earn a master’s degree. I would have been able to tell at that moment that a bachelor’s degree was the only degree that I needed to go into debt for.
Why Career Assessment
The best advice that anyone can give incoming college students is to make the most of the natural talent they possess. By exploring their talents and discovering what niches in the workforce may be best for them, schools could easily raise retention rates and provide students with a fulfilling college adventure. There is no greater tool for discovering a student’s true calling than career assessment.
Career assessment can also help students save time and money especially if they are attending an expensive college or university. By deciding your path early on, you can take the necessary classes to graduate on time. This will decrease your expense by keeping your college tenure to four years instead of the often-used five-year plan. Knowing your path will also allow you to get involved in the right clubs and internship programs early on to ensure your placement and fulfillment of the degree requirements. A little early investment in learning what you want to do can save you a lot of money.
Where to Look
Most high school and college level advisors will have resources available for career assessment whether it be testing, pamphlets, or even programs that students can enroll in. But if you’re interested in checking it out yourself, just to get an idea of what’s out there, here are a few resources you can check out to help you on your way.
Your local bookstore or library can be a plethora of resources for career assessment. There are literally hundreds of books that have been published on career. There’s even a “dummy guide” if you don’t want to burst your brain on the subject. Amazon.com® alone comes up with over 400 titles and that’s just in the book section. There’s even magazines that you can subscribe to that are devoted to providing the latest information on career assessment and the constantly fluctuating employment field. As always, the internet is another fantastic resource for researching careers.
There are also plenty of multimedia choices for career assessment from DVD to VHS tapes featuring renowned psychologists and life advisors. CD-ROMs featuring assessment software have also become popular. Most of these programs feature tests ranging from skill evaluation to personality tests that match your results against a national database of people already working in specific fields. From this data, the program can make recommendations on which fields seem to suit your skill level, interest, and personality. From this information you can then research colleges and universities to see which ones offer the very best instruction in those specific fields. This is a way that you can maximize your investment in higher education.
Another great way to research a field of interest, and this is used by many people who are currently seeking employment, is to attend information interviews with people already working in the field. If you were interested in advertising, you could call a local agency and introduce yourself as a high school student who is looking to major in advertising to see if anyone would be willing to speak to you and impart some knowledge and wisdom. There’s always someone who is more than willing to meet with you and perhaps describe what their own educational path was like leading to their current career.
There are hundreds of fields and thousands of jobs just waiting for students to take when they graduate from college. But none of these jobs will be available without the right skill sets and education. If you take the time now to figure out your career path, you can effectively prepare for what you will need to know to land the ideal job for you.
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About the Author:
Jay Schroyer has worked in the client and customer service end of business for over five years in retail, advertising, and printing. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English writing and communication.
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