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Why Put Do A Career Self-Analysis On This Website?

How to do a career self-analysis is to help:

• Those who are having difficulty knowing what they want as a career goal
• Those who are considering career change
• Those who have not understood some of the word-smithing and keyword issues with developing content for a resume, and
• To provide some general perspective for those who do not know how to do a career self-analysis.

Therefore, please do not mistake the brevity of the pages in this section of this site allocated to career evaluation as an attempt to minimize depth of the subject. The purpose here is more orientation than detailed instruction.

As you proceed, I hope you will glean what you need to know to do a career self-analysis. There will be companion pages on later dates that will more fully develop some resources, and finely tune instructions to assist you if you have a deeper interest.

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Your First Step To Do A Career Self-Analysis

You will have some decisions to make. One of those decisions is about the depth to which you need to pursue the process.

• Some folks simply need a little refresher on updating career jargon for an in-process resume.
• Some will want to catch up on the latest trends in an industry.
• Some will want to better identify skills to put in a resume
• Some will want to develop additional content for a resume
• Some will be looking for specific items to add to an already powerful resume to get that edge up on the competition
• Others are considering life-altering decisions about what they wish to do with the rest of their lives and need a very detailed process.

Your first step is to become aware of:

• How far you NEED or WANT to go with this process, and
• The purpose(s) of your study.

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To Do A Career Self-Analysis
Is A Wise Time Investment

You may discover, as you do a cursory overview of the way to do a career self-analysis, that you would like to invest a bit more in this process.

You may become intrigued with the discoveries you make about yourself, and their ramifications for your career, desiring more knowledge about the opportunities that are more appropriate for you.

After initially deciding you need little help here, you may later change your mind and do a career self-analysis with more detail.

That is OK, too. There is little cost attached here, except the time you choose to invest in self discovery.

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Establishing The Scope of Your Study

There are multiple facets of your personality you may want to consider. One of the reasons there are so many people dissatisfied with their jobs is that they have never stopped to consider what they are really well equipped to do.

The typical resume writer's focus is simply on skills. Now don't get me wrong, skills are a MAJOR part of the development of your resume. Fail to identify your skills, you will not work. End of Story.

However, there are other elements to your work life you may wish to explore. Perhaps there are other disciplines where your skills, abilities and knowledge bases would be more appropriate. The career self-analysis is the best process to uncover some of your other options.

Whether your needs are simple or complex, you can adapt your career self-analysis to your particular needs. The scope of your analysis can be as wide or narrow as fits your needs.

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To Do A Career Self-Analysis Gives
Your Orientation To The World Of Work

You will also want to consider your orientation to the world of work: whether you are more comfortable working with

• data
• people
• things

You will want to identify the skills you have developed regarding each area. After answering the general question, the next steps are to

• Identify your skills within that specific area
• Identify the level of skill you have in each area, and
• prioritize your lists.

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To Do A Career Self-Assessment
Will Help Identify Your More Complex Skills

Regardless of the specific career area you select, there are more and less complex skills. The less complex skills are claimed by large numbers of people. As you ascend the hierarchy of skill complexity, there are fewer skill masters.

An employer is going to be looking for the more complex skills, so the greater complexity you can identify as a skill of yours, and provide evidence of proficiency, the more attractive candidate for employment you will become.

In addition, there are fewer competitors who possess the more complex skills, so identifying those more complex skills gives a double boost to your resume.

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When You Do A Career Self-Analysis You Will Prioritize Your Skills

You will also want to cluster your skills around these three major areas:

• data manipulation
• people skills
• skills with things.

You can then use this information to determine whether there may be an employment interest you have not investigated, but for which you may be ideally suited.

Once you have clustered your skills, you will want to prioritize them, with the skills you most enjoy and at which you are best, at the top of your list.

Just because you possess a skill does not necessarily mean that is an area in which you must work. I have experience pouring concrete, laying carpet, and climbing/trimming trees. However, with a graduate degree I received later in life, I no longer have interest in using those skills as my work focus.

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Do A Career Self-Analysis To Discover
Other Resume Related Elements

Consider other factors than simply your skills. For instance, do you hold certain values that would aid you in a particular field, or eliminate you from others?

• Members of PETA would probably not be interested in the beef or chicken processing industries.
• Most ministers would have little interest in being a bouncer for a strip club.

Your values can make working in a particular industry quite inappropriate. A clear understanding of your

• motivations
• attitudes
• values and
• beliefs and philosophies about life

can certainly give you insight about what industries to eliminate from your job search.

On the other hand, those same elements could help you target an industry for which you may be ideally suited.

When you analyze your career, you will want to deal with the obvious:

• Work history
• Education
• Accomplishments
• Honors and/or awards
• Publications
• Patents
• Presentations
• Strengths
• Weaknesses
• Abilities
• Knowledge bases you have mastered
• Talents
• Etc.

Other pages of this web site will be targeted to those areas specifically.

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The Primary Reason To Do A Career Self-Analysis

The primary point of analyzing your career is that

• You know
• Yourself
• Your assets
• Take time to consider how to put your best qualities forward and
• To consider the best career fields for you.

While it is quite easy to take an hour, write out a few things about yourself and put it forward as a resume, it is quite something else to put out a document that describes you precisely and beats the competition hands down.

You must have the highest quality content to do so. If you will implement this process and use the material gained, you will get better material from which to build your resume.

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