The Kuder Assessment
While working through the Kuder assessments, the “aha moments” that I experienced were primarily related to my values. I would describe them as “aha moments” because I feel like I have a pretty good sense of my values, and once I completed the values portion of this assessment, my results were rather accurate in comparison to my own perception of my values. I am the kind of person who needs to find purpose and passion in my work, but I also want to work for people who have similar values and allow me to achieve a work-life balance. Seeing the results of my values once I completed that portion of the assessment was an “aha moment” because it was essentially a confirmation of my own opinion from an outside source. There wasn’t a career listed that matched my exact Holland Code, but the careers listed that stuck out most to me because of this assessment were emergency management directors and equal opportunity representatives and officers. With respect to the interest profiler, my interests scored an SCR (Social, Conventional, Realistic) in the Holland Occupations Code system.
I think that I could use interest-based assessments to move my career and life forward by considering the results of my assessments when determining which occupations, I would enjoy the most. It is important for me to work in a place where I feel like the work that I do is important and purposeful, or I feel less determined and motivated to work hard for something. I was not very surprised by my interests score because I feel like those categories are an accurate representation of my interests. I am someone who values fostering human relationships and developing a network of peers, so scoring highest in the social category was not a surprise to me, but in a way, it was very validating because a resource other than my own opinion was confirming my position. The connection that I saw between this assessment and most of the others that I have taken in the past, is that I value finding purpose in my work and balancing my life and work.
The “aha moment” that I experienced while working through the “skills/work values-based” assessments was that my Holland Code used the same three categories for my highest scores. While my scores in all of the skills categories showed some moderate variation from the interest’s assessment, I scored SCR in both Holland code assessments. My top skills from the assessment were social, conventional, and realistic. I think that the practical skill is certainly one that I highlighted in my electronic portfolio because I am someone who prefers to use structural and practical solutions. While it is important to be creative as well, I believe that following a structured system and branching off from there is a valuable strategy in problem-solving. I prefer to start with a structured system because I am someone who needs to lay the foundation and get an idea of what direction I want to go before I attempt to insert creative solutions. I believe that I could use this skills-based assessment to move my career and life forward by finding careers that match the skills that I possess. I feel like finding an occupation and organization where you fit in the most is the best possible outcome for any aspiring college graduate. I feel like most of us want to find a career in an organization where you can stay for a substantial amount of time and grow personally. It is important to find an organization that matches your values as well and using the skills assessment can help you find that place that fits you best. I have not taken any other assessments that assessed my skills in the same way that the Kuder assessment has.
I think that I could use interest-based assessments to move my career and life forward by considering the results of my assessments when determining which occupations, I would enjoy the most. It is important for me to work in a place where I feel like the work that I do is important and purposeful, or I feel less determined and motivated to work hard for something. I was not very surprised by my interests score because I feel like those categories are an accurate representation of my interests. I am someone who values fostering human relationships and developing a network of peers, so scoring highest in the social category was not a surprise to me, but in a way, it was very validating because a resource other than my own opinion was confirming my position. The connection that I saw between this assessment and most of the others that I have taken in the past, is that I value finding purpose in my work and balancing my life and work.
The “aha moment” that I experienced while working through the “skills/work values-based” assessments was that my Holland Code used the same three categories for my highest scores. While my scores in all of the skills categories showed some moderate variation from the interest’s assessment, I scored SCR in both Holland code assessments. My top skills from the assessment were social, conventional, and realistic. I think that the practical skill is certainly one that I highlighted in my electronic portfolio because I am someone who prefers to use structural and practical solutions. While it is important to be creative as well, I believe that following a structured system and branching off from there is a valuable strategy in problem-solving. I prefer to start with a structured system because I am someone who needs to lay the foundation and get an idea of what direction I want to go before I attempt to insert creative solutions. I believe that I could use this skills-based assessment to move my career and life forward by finding careers that match the skills that I possess. I feel like finding an occupation and organization where you fit in the most is the best possible outcome for any aspiring college graduate. I feel like most of us want to find a career in an organization where you can stay for a substantial amount of time and grow personally. It is important to find an organization that matches your values as well and using the skills assessment can help you find that place that fits you best. I have not taken any other assessments that assessed my skills in the same way that the Kuder assessment has.
The Motivation and Career Anchors Assessment:
What I absolutely loved about the Motivation and Career Anchors Assessment was the way that it divided your motivators and what you find to be true about yourself into two separate sections of the assessment. It gave me the opportunity to connect the dots between what motivates me and why. In the first section, I spent time evaluating myself and determining how important several different aspects of a full-time career are to me. Once I reached the second section, the theme of the questions changed to be geared toward finding out how accurately each question represents you. In the first section I kept asking saying to myself "I know that this is important to me, but why?" and I wasn't really able to answer that right away. However, the second portion of the assessment sparked a lightbulb in my brain because it gave me the perspective of 'I know this about myself, that is probably why I place so much importance in that'. Upon completion of this assessment, I scored a 70 in my primary career anchor, which was security, stability, and organizational identity. I wasn’t surprised by the fact that this was my highest scoring category because I felt like I relatively lean that direction when it comes to my career values, but I was surprised by how large the gap between scores was. For example, I scored a 70 in this category, while I scored an 18 in entrepreneurial creativity, which was my lowest scoring category. Not every category had this large of a gap, but that one certainly surprised me. The assessment noted that there are two subcategories within this category that are primarily related to geographic location or career duration within a single organization. I think that I scored so high in this category because I prefer stability in both areas. I have put a lot of effort into building community for myself and my family in the town that I live in, so I don’t have any desire to uproot my family and move across the country or anywhere else for a job. I also am a very loyal employee, so I see myself as someone who would stay at one company for a very long time if they had similar values and accommodated to my needs.
My lowest scoring career anchor was entrepreneurial creativity, and my score was an 18. My score in this category did not surprise me at all. In my own experience, people who own and operate their own business have little time to attend to the other areas of my life. As someone who thrives most when I can balance all areas of my life, I think that owning a business would overwhelm me and have a significant impact on my own happiness. I think that this category is quite the opposite of my primary career anchor. With stability and security as my primary career anchor, I am far from preferring a career where there are frequently significant risks, fluctuations in financial health, and large obstacles that could affect other areas of my life.
I thought that the career anchors assessment instrument was a rather strong tool. For me it seemed like it represented my own preferences and ideals with far more accuracy than many of the other assessments that I have participated in. Occasionally when I take assessments, I feel like there is little to no difference in the results that I get from different categories. However, I feel like my results from this assessment had a much wider spread and frankly there was more appropriate variation between my scores than it seems like there typically is. Overall, I thought that this tool was a successful in identifying my primary and secondary career anchors while also giving me strong results with information that I can use in the future when looking for my ideal organization and occupation.
My lowest scoring career anchor was entrepreneurial creativity, and my score was an 18. My score in this category did not surprise me at all. In my own experience, people who own and operate their own business have little time to attend to the other areas of my life. As someone who thrives most when I can balance all areas of my life, I think that owning a business would overwhelm me and have a significant impact on my own happiness. I think that this category is quite the opposite of my primary career anchor. With stability and security as my primary career anchor, I am far from preferring a career where there are frequently significant risks, fluctuations in financial health, and large obstacles that could affect other areas of my life.
I thought that the career anchors assessment instrument was a rather strong tool. For me it seemed like it represented my own preferences and ideals with far more accuracy than many of the other assessments that I have participated in. Occasionally when I take assessments, I feel like there is little to no difference in the results that I get from different categories. However, I feel like my results from this assessment had a much wider spread and frankly there was more appropriate variation between my scores than it seems like there typically is. Overall, I thought that this tool was a successful in identifying my primary and secondary career anchors while also giving me strong results with information that I can use in the future when looking for my ideal organization and occupation.
The "Big 5" Personality Assessment, The DISC Assessment, & the me3 Major and Career Quiz:
The first additional assessment that I completed for this discussion was the “Big 5” assessment. I have done the Big five assessment in multiple different classes, but it has always proven to be beneficial to me in a different way. I think that this assessment was beneficial to take again because I have had different perspectives of my own personality at several points in my life. Utilizing the same the test has given me a bit of consistency and allowed me to compare the results from then to now and be able to further understand myself and what I want in a career. The category that I scored highest in on this assessment was extraversion. I believe that seeing this result was beneficial to me because in almost all of the other assessments that I have taken, I have scored highly in areas that relate to finding purpose and helping people.
The second additional assessment that I completed was the “Disc” assessment. I didn’t find this assessment to be quite as useful as the “Big 5” assessment. I spent time thoroughly evaluating each category, but once I completed the assessment and attempted to view my results, the assessment told me that I had very unusual pattern of responses and that there was equal value placed in each of the four categories that the assessment scores you on.
The third additional assessment that I completed was the “me3: Major and Career Quiz”. I actually really liked this assessment because I have never used an assessment that asked you to make choices about your career based on pictures that represent different careers. I thought that analyzing pictures for different things that catch your interest was an intriguing way to force you to make a decision about one career or another. While I was doing this assessment, I kept looking for the first thing I saw that I could see myself doing. I tried to focus on what I would enjoy doing all day. I especially liked how it revisited past pictures against each other to narrow down your choices and help you spend time considering which careers you would prefer over others. Overall, I thought this assessment tool was very different than anything else I had used before, and I thought it helped me put my ideal job into perspective.
The second additional assessment that I completed was the “Disc” assessment. I didn’t find this assessment to be quite as useful as the “Big 5” assessment. I spent time thoroughly evaluating each category, but once I completed the assessment and attempted to view my results, the assessment told me that I had very unusual pattern of responses and that there was equal value placed in each of the four categories that the assessment scores you on.
The third additional assessment that I completed was the “me3: Major and Career Quiz”. I actually really liked this assessment because I have never used an assessment that asked you to make choices about your career based on pictures that represent different careers. I thought that analyzing pictures for different things that catch your interest was an intriguing way to force you to make a decision about one career or another. While I was doing this assessment, I kept looking for the first thing I saw that I could see myself doing. I tried to focus on what I would enjoy doing all day. I especially liked how it revisited past pictures against each other to narrow down your choices and help you spend time considering which careers you would prefer over others. Overall, I thought this assessment tool was very different than anything else I had used before, and I thought it helped me put my ideal job into perspective.
Reflection:
These assessments all brought their own perks, but personally I have always liked the "Big 5" personality assessment. I am someone who appreciates consistency, and since I have taken this assessment in more than two other courses, I have past results to compare to this rounds results. Having the opportunity to compare results is very valuable to me because it shows me the strides I have made between now and then. Prior to this course, I had never taken The Kuder Assessment, but it was actually one of my favorite assessments that I have taken. I really loved how it divided your assessment into three different areas and allowed you to focus on one area at a time. I felt much more focused and intentional in my answers and I felt like it made my results more accurate than they would have been if they were all in just one list of questions. Overall, I thought each of these assessments had their own valuable contributions to helping me understand myself and what kind of organization I want to be a part of, but I thought the "Big 5" and The Kuder Assessments were the most valuable to me.