UCD Career Center | Just ASK!

Defining Your
Career Identity

Just ASK! Assess - Defining Your Career Identity

PERSONALITY

After you have thoroughly “Assessed” yourself with a variety of the “ASK! Principles” then you are ready to plug the pieces together. Challenge yourself to think about your potential and best fit for your life’s contribution. There are two keys to career planning: know yourself and know the world of work. Embedded in each of these tasks is exploration. Whether you are just starting your career or are finding yourself in career transition, these guidelines will be helpful.

Think first about your personality strengths, what are your best natural talents from your personality that you can and have developed? Begin making a list or better yet a “job description” of your best personality traits. Include words that describe YOU.

For example your “job description” might read like this:

“I’m looking for a career field where I can use my natural enthusiasm and ingenious nature which includes my natural abilities and talents toward being curious, talkative, clever, and discovering ways where I can increase my own competence. I love new ideas and am open to possibilities to solve problems and work on a variety of stimulating projects.”

INTERESTS

Next, using the “ASK! Principles”, be clear on what your interests are. What motivates you to keep going with a project? Being interested in something holds a tremendous amount of energy within it. For example, if you are interested in a subject you are studying in class, you want to go to class (even an 8am class!), read the text, talk about it with your instructor, dig deeper and show more natural drive. People that are interested in what they are studying will be successful because there is a natural motivation pushing them internally.

Try writing a job description using only words that reflect interest.

“I’m looking for a position where I can use my interests in business, politics, leadership, or entrepreneurship, to work with people, on a team. I’d enjoy managing, persuading, training others, and using creative methods to do it. I like to take risks and enjoy competition and independence.”

Do you see areas where Personality/Talents and Interests overlap with these descriptions?

SKILLS

Now begin to add the skill sets you’ve identified using the “ASK! Principles”. Skills can be defined in three areas:

Adaptive skills are developed from your personality traits or characteristics that enable you to relate to your environment. They play a key role in work effectiveness, performance and job satisfaction.
Content skills are those that refer to the mastery of a specific field of knowledge required to perform a particular job or task. These skills are usually acquired through work experience or education.
Functional skills are primarily acquired through the experience of living rather than through specific jobs or formal education. These skills comprise 80-90% of any jobs. Functional skills involve interaction with people, information, or objects. Try writing a job description using only skills:

“I’d like to use my leadership skills to train others in problem-solving and creative decision making”.

Are you seeing some of the overlaps when we include personality, interests, and skills into this mix?

VALUES

Stated simply, as a critical part of the “ASK! Principles,” a value is something you highly regard; something that you consider very important to you. Values are the standard by which attitudes are formed. There are three types of values:

Career Related Values: those aspects of a job that give you satisfaction.
Work Environment Values: the concrete aspects of a work environment that you would prefer.
Core Life Values: the things in life that are core to making your life have meaning.

Try writing a “job description” using only values:

“Challenge and creativity are essential to me in a job as well as a sense of security and working with people everyday. I want to have time to be with my family and make a contribution to society”.

PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER

Look right in the center of these four connecting circles; this is your career identity which also showcases some of your greatest strengths. When you make career choices around these strengths you will have a better chance of success. The closer you stay to the center of your inner circle the more confidence, motivation, and joy will be in your life’s work. “What’s in your inner circle….?”