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Career Services
Personality Traits, Interests, Skills, Values & Interests

Although discussion with a career advisor in the Office of Career Services is an excellent way to identify important and relevant factors to consider in a search for a major and occupation, there are also many online resources that can assist you. Here are some to explore:

Personality Traits

Understanding aspects of your personality can help you identify work environments that are well-suited for you. No single personality trait is advantageous over another, but being aware of one’s personal preferences is an important step in making a satisfactory career choice.

One example is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to explore aspects of your personality. Humanmetrics Jung Typology Test Humanmetrics offers free brief online MBTI assessment.

Take a personality inventory here ($5.00) and explore many aspects related to personality: career choice, relationships, personal growth, etc.

  • The Personality Page

Take a personality inventory here and learn more about the 16 personality types, including career paths and workplace habits.

Interests

Since you will likely spend over 90,000 hours of your life working, it makes sense to pick a major and occupation that is something that you enjoy and will continue to want to learn about over the years. These inventories will help you identify career-related interests and will provide suggestions of occupations and majors that are related to your interests.

After you answer 60 questions about activities that would interest you, a list of occupations that might appeal to you will be generated. This site also links to information about these occupations.

Click on “Assess Yourself” on the top tabs to take a very quick interest inventory. This will link to occupations and majors that might appeal to your interests.

Skills

The skills you have and enjoy using may suggest occupations that will appeal to you.

The Skills Profiler takes you through a series of questions that allow you to identify skills and activities you have. This leads to a customized Skills Profile that includes:

  • A summary of identified skills and work activities.
  • A list of occupations matched either to skills or work activities.
  • A link to Occupation Profiles for more detailed occupation information, as well as links from there to the Employer Locator for names of employers in their area.
  • The Skills Profiler

Skills Search is designed to help you use your skill set to identify occupations for exploration. You select a set of skills from six broad groups of skills to create your customized skill list.

If you have had a job and are looking to identify other occupations that will use your skill set, this very quick inventory may give you some good ideas.

Values

Work can bring much satisfaction when it fulfills our values.

Once you have identified your work values, you can talk with a career advisor and explore occupational information to find careers which align with your values.

Inspired in part by: Syracuse University Career Services, Cornell Career Services, UC Berkeley Career Center, and RIT Career Services