An important first step is to understand yourself, your strengths, weaknesses, aspirations and activities that you enjoy doing and those you don’t, your skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. Use that understanding to design a better job for yourself.You may want to also perform a financial analysis, and establish in your mind how long you can last in your current job, or if you don’t have one, without a job. This will have a bearing on how you go about your job search.Do research on industries, for you may be in the wrong industry for your temperament – don’t be stuck in it. Know what opportunities other industries have to offer.
Now this may sound like a lot of work, and it is, but it can be accomplished in a few precious hours. You will be glad you did.
Just as a country does not commit its armed forces to battle without a great deal of careful planning and laying out the logistics. Similarly, you should not go into battle ill-prepared or ill-equipped. It is competitive world out there, and we are here to provide you an edge, if you’ll follow through our suggestions.
We’ll provide you step-by-step instructions on how to complete the Assess portion of the process.
Among the instruments or tools we recommend are:
Personality Type Indicators
Personality type indicators help you identify your preferred behaviors. They are based on rigorous theories pioneered by Carl Jung. See, for example, this link.
Choose one assessment from the following three commonly used types of tests:
(a) Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator (“MBTI”) analysis. Example of a free test and detailed description available at this site. Your output from the exercise should resemble this document: mbti-analysis.pdf
(b) The Birkman Method combines motivational, behavioral and interest evaluation into one single assessment, which provides a multi-dimensional and comprehensive analysis, thus reducing the need for multiple assessments. See, for example, this link
(c) Kiersey. Example of a free test and detailed description available at this site
SWOT Analysis – document your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Create a graphical representation as described in this document: SWOT Analysis (PDF)
PEST Analysis – Step outside your personal universe, to look at Political, Economic, Socio-cultural and Technological factors that affect your career.
SKILLS Inventory – Note down both your trade skills and “soft” skills (also known as Managerial Competencies) in the format shown in this document: Skills Inventory (PDF). We’ll use this document in important ways later on to influence an interview.
Leadership Skills Inventory (LSI) – For managerial and leadership readers, follow the instructions and template provided in this document to create a table of your leadership skills inventory: Leadership Skills Inventory (PDF). We’ll discuss in a later phase of our process how you will use the document in your job search.
Visualize Your Future – Visualization is a powerful tool to help figure out what is right for you. After you have assessed your strengths, weaknesses, personality types, it is time to visualize your future job. Imagine a day in your new job. Visualize when you would be getting up. How is the commute? Visualize your co-workers. To help you further, you may create a collage from clippings relevant to your perceived new job. Stick the collage where you’ll see it everyday. If the collage makes you smile (or become happy) when you see it, chances are it resonates with you. This is a simple but powerful way of reinforcing your goal.
Daily to-do Lists – Create a list of no more than 10 items that you hope to accomplish each day. How does your target job/career factor in that? Should be in the top 5 items you hope to accomplish each day.
To proceed to the NEXT STEP, please click here. Or to return to the step-by-step Process page, click here.
