Considering your skills and abilities and how they may fit a particular occupation comes out of one of the earliest career development fields, Trait-Factor theories, and is still used today. These theories recommend creating occupational profiles for specific jobs as well as identifying individual differences, matching individuals to occupations based on these differences. You can identify activities you enjoy and those in which you have a level of competency though a formal assessment.

Holland's Career Typology is a widely used to connect personality types and career fields. This theory establishes a classification system that matches personality characteristics and personal preferences to job characteristics. The Holland Codes are six personality/career types that help describe a wide range of occupations.

Being a worker is just one of your life roles, in addition to others such as, student, parent, and child. Super's Lifespan theory directly addresses the fact that we each play multiple roles in our lives and that these roles change over the course of our lives. How we think about ourselves in these roles, their requirements of them, and the external forces that affect them, may influence how we look at careers in general and how we make choices for ourselves.

Krumboltz's Social Learning and Planned Happenstance theories address factors related to our experiences with others and in previous work situations. Having positive experiences and role models working in specific careers may influence the set of careers we consider as options for ourselves. One aspect of Social Cognitive Career Theory addresses the fact that we are likely to consider continuing a particular task if we have had a positive experience doing it. In this way, we focus on areas in which we have had proven success and achieved positive self-esteem.

Racial and ethnic background, as well as the culture of an individual's regional area, local community, and extended family, may impact career decisions. Our culture often shapes our values and expectations as they relate to many parts of our lives, including jobs and careers. Multicultural career counseling has emerged as a specialized field to take these influences into consideration when counseling clients and students. We can't attribute the predominant characteristics of a culture to any one of it's individuals, but having an awareness of the values and expectations of our culture may help us understand how we make our career choices.

Both men and women have experienced career-related stereotypes. Gender is a factor included in multiple career development theories and approaches including, Social Learning and multicultural career counseling. How we view ourselves as individuals may influence both the opportunities and barriers we perceive as we make career decisions. Studies of gender and career development are ongoing as roles of men and women in the workforce, and in higher education, evolve.

All of our career choices take place within the context of society and the economy. Several career theories, such as Social Cognitive Career Theory and Social Learning, address this context in addition to other factors. Events that take place in our lives may affect the choices available to us and even dictate our choices to a certain degree. Changes in the economy and resulting job market may also affect how our careers develop.

What do you want to be when you grow-up? You may remember this question from your childhood, and it may have helped shape how you thought about careers then, as well as later in life. Career counseling theories are expanding as programs related to career choice are developed for all ages, including the very young. Ginzberg proposed a theory that describes three life stages related to career development. The first stage, fantasy, where early ideas about careers are formed, takes place up to age 11.

I. Identify personal influences of your top five (5) career choices.

II. Your values are the principles or standards that guide you in making choices and decisions in life. Take a look at the values on the left side of the table and then choose ten (10) that you consider the most important by checking the cells in the middle column. Rank these ten (10) chosen values with 1 as the highest value.

Rate the following skills from 1-5, 1 being the highest and 5 as the lowest for each category then state an experience for your top choice.