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Assess Your Best Career Potential

What did you want to be when you grew up? I ask this often of people I interview and then explore how they ended up with the career they actually have today. Interestingly, most everyone is not what they dreamed about in earlier years. Most people tell me they end up in jobs and - ultimately - careers based on anything but a dream or a personal plan. Some say a friend helped them find a first professional job, after which they fine their way within the company. Some say they graduated, interviewed and took the best paying first job, which led them to paths they didn't imagine. Some try several roles and companies until they find a role they feel is comfortable and interesting.

Today, work opportunities are both more complex and more competitive, especially with the economic downturn. It's a good time to assess what are your core capabilities, work style, vocational fit and passions so you take command of your future career. You can focus your career in ways that will sustain and engage you in the long-term.

Here are three recommendations to get started.

1. Read Now, Discover Your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. The book is crisply written and quickly helps one understand the value of identifying one's personal core strengths and how to develop a career with them. The book is clever marketing, as well, in that the inside jacket cover has a serial code you can use to go on line and complete as assessment of what are your top five personal strengths. You can then use these to help shape alternative careers in which this combination best suits you. Key advice in this book is to create a career path that plays to your strengths rather than spending time trying to "improve your deficiencies". It suggests people are happier and more engaged if they work from their natural strengths.

2. Complete an online assessment called Profiler XT. The tool identifies one's key professional competencies and includes a vocation "fit" score for management versus technical and professional roles. It's best to seek out a career coach with whom to work to interpret the overall findings and use them to shape a career plan.

3. Ask an HR professional or career coach to work with you to assess your current strengths and stretch your thinking about career options for the future. This could include getting feedback from colleagues, managers and direct reports about what they see are strengths as they work with you, as a basis for understanding how you work. It helps to have an objective person open alternatives about how to use your strengths in lines of work you may never have considered. Thinking out loud with a creative vocational coach can both offer new directions and guide you about how to get started.

Many people simply "fall" into a line of work, but you can take charge of your professional direction. Taking time to explore your career is healthy. It can refine your success if you are on a path that suits you well. Moreover, it can spark a refreshing new direction that will engage and excite you in year to come.

Learn more about this author, Donna Hamlin.
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