Knowing Yourself and Career Assessments

Interests, Values, Strengths: What Drives you?

Understanding your interests, strengths, and values is a critical part of career development — because your career should reflect who you are, not just what’s available.

When you define what excites you, what you're naturally good at, and what matters most to you, it becomes easier to identify opportunities that feel fulfilling and sustainable.

This self-awareness can help you choose a major, evaluate job options, communicate confidently in interviews, and avoid paths that aren’t the right fit. It’s the foundation of every smart career move.

One popular framework that explores the connection between Interests and Career is John Holland's RIASEC theory. It proposes six Interest types (REALISTIC, INVESTIGATIVE, ARTISTIC, SOCIAL, ENTERPRISING, CONVENTIONAL) that align with different career environments:

RIASEC Chart

EXERCISE: From these descriptors of the different themes, what do you think are your top 2 - 3 areas of relatable interests? Consider how you engage or express these various interests in your day to day life in work, school, volunteering, and hobbies.

Use the following tool from ONET, an occupation database with extensive information on thousands of occupations, to INPUT YOUR INTEREST THEMES find occupations that fit with your interest theme and conduct exploration of these occupations accordingly

O*NET online explorer tool

Use the following worksheet from UC Berkeley’s Career Center to reflect on your work and personal values
UCB CAREER CENTER VALUES SHEET

ADDITIONAL Values Assessment from Career OneStop,

Work Values Matcher

Strengths allows individuals to align their capabilities with job requirements, pursue roles that leverage their strengths, and continuously improve through skill development. A successful career often involves capitalizing on individual strengths to excel in one's chosen field. Regular self-assessment and a commitment to enhancing strengths contribute to ongoing professional growth and adaptability in the dynamic landscape of the workforce. Review the following resources to learn more about Strengths:

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

As you explore this page, use this worksheet to list your interests, values, skills, and personal qualities: UC Berkeley Planning Your Future Worksheet.

WHAT NEXT?

As you go through your career journey, these aspects of you will likely change. However, these are important factors to define and reflect to help determine what pathway you want to take, including what major to choose

Career Assessments

Career counselors often use personality assessments and counseling to guide individuals towards careers that align with their unique strengths, values, and aspirations. These are not tests; there are no right or wrong answers.

Below are some resources that feature assessments on defining your possible interests, skills, and values. There are more that we may provide for you in a career counseling appointment if needed.

We highly recommend meeting with a career counselor to discuss the results of any assessment you take.

In addition to our online resources, we also have more comprehensive assessments such as the MBTI, Strong Interest Inventory, Cards Value Sort that we can further discuss in a career counseling session.

IMPORTANT: No assessment will ever tell you what you should and should not pursue. Instead it serves as a tool to help define aspects of yourself to reflect and direct your exploration in a way that is aligned with how your interests, skills, values, and personality may relate to your career goals.

	Eureka Career Program Check out assessments such Inner Heroes, How Do I Learn?, What Are My Values?, MicroSkills, True Colors, and Occ-U-Sort to match your skills, personality and talents to possible careers that may be of interest to you to explore further. Site code for ECC Students: PQINZGF
	Career Cruising Log in using the following username and password. You can create your own account to save any materials on Career Cruising Login username: elcaminocollege Password: career A comprehensive and interactive career guide resource that provides information such as job description, working conditions, earnings, education, sample career path, and more. Assessments featured match your likes and dislikes, skills, and learning styles to find careers that match up with your interests.
	Career Coach Career Coach has information on occupations within various career areas, a resume builder and a simple assessment to find matching occupations that may be of interest to you. Explore occupational information on daily tasks, education, wages, employment projections, actual job postings, and more.
	California Career Zone A career resource program provides comprehensive information for 900+ occupations. Includes self-assessment modules to help define possible interests, work importance and skills. Suggestion to check out financial literacy tools “Budget your Life” to determine the kind of lifestyle you want, what area, the budget you’ll need and the kinds of occupations with salaries that can lead to sustainable living wages.