Career Assessment Resources

Career Assessment Resources In this section you will discover a wide variety of useful exercises to enhance your understanding of your career preferences to:

  • Identify a career focus
  • Explore career and educational options
  • Enhance skill development to increase marketability
  • Market yourself in resumes and employment interviews.

Assess & Focus

Use the Assessment Exercises below in conjunction with the SkillScan transferable skills assessment system and complete the Career Profile to create a holistic view of career preferences.

Guides for Taking the Print Card Sort

Additional Skills Assessment Tools

  • Assessing your Pattern of Skills and Motivations — An autobiographical exercise to identify your unique pattern of skills and motivations from life and work experiences. Compare the results with Drive or Express Online Assessment to validate your greatest strengths. Note: This version is designed to print and fill in by hand.

Important Instructions for Using Interactive Forms: Please download and complete online. Required: Adobe Acrobat 9.0 or higher (free download).

Interest Exercises

  • Holland Interests Assessment — A quick exercise based on Holland’s RIASEC occupational theory to identify your top interest themes (works with all SkillScan assessments).
  • Discovering your Interests — A list of insight-oriented questions to identify specific interests - useful for exploring potential fields and industries.
  • Discovering Your Pre-retirement Interests — An exercise to explore areas of interest for potential volunteer, paid work or entrepreneurial options.

Values Exercises

Other Exercises

  • Ideal Work Environment — An exercise to generate and prioritize ideal work conditions.
  • Personal Traits — An exercise to evaluate personal qualities and strengths. May be used to send to colleagues, fellow employees and managers to gain more objective feedback.

Pre-retirement Exercises

Integrate

When you have completed the SkillScan report along with the other assessment exercises, use these forms to summarize and validate your preferences. Observe themes across the various assessments and generate career ideas.

Important Forms Instructions: please download and complete online.

Required: Adobe Acrobat 9.0 or higher (free download).

Explore

In addition to the resources below, use job search sites such as Indeed.com, Simplyhired.com and Google.com to identify specific job title of careers that interest you.

Career Exploration Websites

College & Training Websites

  • College Navigator — A free consumer information tool designed to help students research education and training programs.
  • College Board Big Future — a free tool to explore and research colleges that align with your interests and goals.
  • Fastweb.com — A site devoted to identifying scholarships, colleges, internships and jobs.
  • CareerOneStop — A free resource for researching education and training options including 2-year and 4-year college degree programs, apprenticeships, and short-term certificate programs.

Develop

A variety of helpful services and career development resources for job seekers.

  • Local College Career Center — College career centers often provide career and academic counseling, career and life planning courses, a career library, internship and employment resources, and alumni programs.
  • CareerOneStop — Assist individuals with career and training information, employment, and career management.
  • Expanded List of Skill Sets and Development Activities — Works with all SkillScan assessments. Lists of practical development ideas for planning development steps that align with each of the 18 Skill Sets.

Market

Exercises and resources to communicate your skills and preferences in resumes, cover letters and interviews.

Job Search Websites

  • Job Star: California's Job Search Guide — Gives quick overviews on resumes, cover letters, and interviewing.
  • Job Hunt Susan Ireland — Offers advice on developing your marketing materials including numerous free resume and cover letter samples.
  • Indeed — A site that integrates thousands of jobs from company hiring pages. Companies also post job openings directly.
  • Glassdoor — A recognized site for identifying open jobs and salary data.
  • LinkedIn — In addition to networking, LinkedIn offers extensive lists of job postings.
  • Chegg Internships — A website for identifying internship openings.
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