Assess Yourself: Take assessments
In this lesson, students will be exposed to a broad overview of the world of work through self/career awareness, especially in the area of your choice, enabling the students to understand that career development is a life-long process. Topics will include self and career assessments, career exploration, personal qualities needed in a work environment, and electronic information sources.
Major Instructional Activities: Students will complete classroom career awareness activities as a means of developing thinking skills, utilizing information-gathering techniques, and exploring self-management tools.
Major Evaluative Techniques: Students will be evaluated on their understanding of the pathways to careers, and on a variety of classroom activities; such as, use of investigative skills via electronic information systems, written and oral reports, and in class presentations.
Essential Objectives:
Upon completion of this course, students should be able to
Acquire knowledge to explain the basics of various career fields
Employ strategies to locate, analyze, and apply career information
Evaluate the importance of career decision making
Self assess one’s interests, aptitudes, values, and abilities
Demonstrate effective work habits in a classroom setting.
Individual Activities:
Assessments are tools to help you explore yourself. They can be based on your skills, interests, values, or other traits. These traits are then matched to a broad list of careers. Assessments are key to successful career exploration; they are the first step in finding the careers that fit you best. Use the resources below to find career assessments.
Not all assessments are the same, so it's important to consider the following before using one:
Questions to Consider
What does it measure?
Who developed it? Are they a trusted source?
Is it a proven tool? Has it been validated?
What will the results look like? How can they be used?
Will you have to pay fees to use it or get your results?
Using the following resources, the student will identify their skills, abilities, and interests using the following assessments:
Skills Profiler: Identifies skills and matches them to jobs.
Interest Profiler: Identifies broad interest areas.
Additional assessment resources can be found at the Career Resource Library.
Skills Profiler: Get Started
Task 1:
Use the Skills Profiler to create a list of your skills and match them to job types that need those skills.
You can use this profile to identify occupations that use your current skills, find gaps you need to fill, or polish your resume.
When your skills profile is complete, you save it as a Microsoft Word within your K: Drive folder.
See an example of a skills profile.
Learn more about the Skills Profiler and how it works
Plan to spend about 20 minutes completing your skills profile. If you need to leave the computer for more than an hour, you should save your work (learn how).
Click on the following link to begin the Skills Profiler and be sure to select the second option (e.g., Start with your skills):
http://www.careerinfonet.org/skills/default.aspx
Task 2:
Once you have completed the skills profile and saved it to the H: Drive, click on the following link to begin your Interest Profiler:
http://www.onetcenter.org/dl_tools/IP_zips/IP-Instr-deskv.pdf
Print out the work activity questions only, pages 4 - 7. Follow the instructions for answering referent work activity questions.
Once you have answered all the work activity questions, click on the following link to score your Interest Profile:
http://www.onetcenter.org/dl_tools/IP_zips/IP-SR-deskp.pdf
Print out pages 1 - 2 only to compile your scores. Please follow the instructions to interpret your scores, documenting said interpretation using Microsoft Word.
Please save this document on the H: Drive.
Task 3:
Once you have completed the assessments above and obtained your skills profile, click on the following link to find occupations by your identified skills:
http://online.onetcenter.org/search/
Select those skills that you have identified and click on "GO" at the bottom of the search page to match said skills with occupations that you may be suited or interested in.
From the resulting list of occupations, select at least three occupations that you would like to explore further.
Once you have three occupations using your identified skills, click on the following link to find occupations by your identified interests:
http://online.onetcenter.org/find/descriptor/browse/Interests/
From the resulting list of occupations, select at least three occupations that you would like to explore further.
Task 4:
Complete the Career Exploration Form (attached below) for each of the three occupations you have chosen. Be sure to be thorough and complete!
The main idea is to get a basic understanding of what the occupation is (e.g., nature of work, working conditions, salary, training, skills, or education required, etc.), so that you can make evaluate if said occupation is for you.
Moreover, you want to make sure that said occupation(s) is in line with your vision board (e.g., does it support the lifestyle you want, does fund the lifestyle you want, will it make you happy, etc.)
Once you have completed the Career Exploration Forms, save them on the H: drive, within the Assessing Yourself directory for your class period in the Engineering Directory. You must have three distinct forms to get credit for the work.
You can use the following resources to help you conduct said career exploration:
Career Exploration: Getting Started
Your Step-by-Step Guide to Choosing a Career