Guidance Office
St. Ciaran's Community School Guidance Department
email: info@guidanceoffice.info
SELF ASSESSMENT
Making the right plans for your future is one of the most difficult tasks you will ever have to complete. Starting with a self-assessment (personal inventory) can give you more choices and broaden your options. A personal inventory can help reveal your abilities, interests and attitudes. It will define your strengths and your weaknesses. Looking for a match between your strengths and the course or profession you are considering is an important first step.
Tests can be helpful, but, "You" are the place to start. What do you do well and enjoy doing?
PERSONALITY & ATTITUDES
Two of the most important factors to determine your happiness and success in a job are your personality and attitudes. Assess your feelings and actions in different situations as they may be different, e.g., in a large group vs. one-on-one, in a fast-paced vs. slow-paced environment. Remember you are unique. Evaluate who you really are now, not the person you think you would like to be. Be honest when you judge your thoughts and feelings, your attitudes and behaviours.
Useful Online Resources
This test is based on the Holland's Career Inventory, as mentioned in class. (It does have an American bias, but many students will find it useful. It costs about €12).
www.advisorteam.com/user/ktsintro.asp
'You're invited to take the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II, the fun, interesting, and revealing test that tells you if you're an Artisan, Guardian, Rational or Idealist. This is the same test used in career development programs at Fortune 500 companies and in counselling centres and career placement centres at major universities. You will get a free temperament description and will then have the opportunity to buy the 10-page Character Report for your type'. (The full version costs!!). Questions are a bit difficult.
The Career questionnaire is divided into sections on jobs, courses and hobbies. Read each question carefully. Think which option you like the most and mark that circle. If you’re not sure then just guess what is best for you. You have to choose one and you can’t leave any blank. Takes a few minutes but very good, again it is Irish.
A large selection of practice tests.
Good Advice from the 'Job Hunters Bible'.
"No test should necessarily be assumed to be accurate. We turn to tests with the hope that someone can definitely tell us who we are and what we should do; and we think a test will do that. No, no, no. You can't say, "Well this must be who I am; the test says so." Test results are sometimes way off the mark. I know countless sad stories about people whose lives were sent down a completely wrong path by test 'results' that they believed when they shouldn't have. You should take all test results with not just a grain of salt, but with a barrel. Tests have one great mission and purpose: To give you ideas you hadn't thought of, and suggestions worth following up. But if you ask them to do more than that, you're asking too much."