Understanding who you are, what you’re good at and what you want out of your career is the first step in uncovering potential career paths or making a career change. Not only will this information help you to identify opportunities best suited to you, it will also help you to prepare effective cover letters and resumes and communicate your personal brand – especially during the final step, the interview.
You can learn about yourself through a number of ways, from answering questions to completing formal assessments to simply asking others. The more you know about yourself, the more likely you are to get the career you really want!
Below are some sample self-assessment questions to get you started:
- What am I good at?
- What was my favourite job? Why?
- What was my least favourite job? Why?
- What hobbies do I enjoy most? Why?
- What were my biggest accomplishments during high school, university and previous jobs?
During your MM Dual Career Journey, you’ll get access to two helpful self-assessment resources – StrengthsFinder and Career Leader. If you have any questions about these tools, please speak to one of your career coaches.
Self-Assessment Tools
StrengthsFinder
A strengths-based self-assessment helps to narrow down your strongest personal attributes, such as how you approach challenges, how you learn, how you engage with others, communication style, etc. Your top strengths help you and your team know your personal style and approach to work, learning, communication, team work and problem-solving.
StrengthsFinder is one of the most common career self-assessment tools and assesses individuals’ strengths in accordance with 34 themes. Through a survey questionnaire, the assessment matches individual attributes across themes to determine top strengths.
Once you complete the assessment, you’ll have a range of tools to use in your career search. You’ll be able to better understand your strengths, how you can work with others and how others can work with you, and you can use your strengths to think about your career successes to-date and how you achieve them.
An overview of the 34 themes can be found here: StrengthsFinder Themes
CareerLeader
CareerLeader is a fully integrated approach to business career self-assessment, developed by the Harvard School of Business and built on the premise that one's interests, motivators and skills will drive their future career success and satisfaction. You can get access to this assessment for free by contacting your B+MM Careers team.
Other Helpful Resources
Other Assessments
- UBC Sauder Self-Assessment Worksheet
- Talentoday assesses your core soft skills and motivations
- Sokanu is a Vancouver-based company that offers a free assessment platform
- TFSA is a finance-focused assessment based in Toronto to explore career matches with the financial services sector
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Books
Articles