How did you handle your school experience? Were you the kind of person who studied regularly for classes, or did you cram for all your exams at the last minute? Did you enjoy taking tests or did you prefer writing papers? Were grades important to you, or did you just want to graduate? Did you seek out professors whose reputation or experiences appealed to you, or did you take classes solely because your major required them? Did you attend lectures that were not required? What kinds of lectures were these? Were you excited by certain subjects? Could you lose yourself in the library for several hours, researching a particular topic?
Did you involve yourself in any extracurricular activities? Which ones did you choose? Why? Did you become a leader in any club? Were you a casual member of several organizations or did you immerse yourself in one or two clubs? Did you participate in any internships? What did you like best about your experiences? Was it important to see the relationship between your coursework and its application to the real world? Were you attracted by the particular organization, industry, or task that needed to be done?
What does all this tell you about yourself? Are certain patterns beginning to appear? Are particular areas of interest starting to emerge? Have you learned anything about yourself or about the choices you made in school that you should consider when deciding upon a work environment?
WORK
Look at all work experience - part-time, summer, volunteer, intern ships, as well as full-time jobs. Do you like a variety of tasks, or would you prefer doing one task? What machines or equipment can you operate? Are they related to a specific job? Are there tests or procedures you're familiar with? Do they fit into a pattern with any of your other skills? Often, a significant volunteer assignment may be more indicative of a career direction than paid experience. Work in a political campaign, for example, may develop experience in coordinating volunteers, writing press releases, organizing fund-raising events, or other skills that have direct job applicability.
Work on a part-time basis, either on weekends or during the summer, may also have more job relevance than is immediately recognizable. Even if you worked at jobs that seemingly utilized none of your skills, you can still learn about yourself from these experiences if you approach them creatively. Compare and contrast the jobs you've had. Think about the different work environments you've been in. Consider the diverse people with whom you've interacted.
Did you like working as a waiter more than you liked working as a clerk in the insurance company? Why was that? Was it the pace? Do you like a faster pace and constant activity more than you like quietude? Or was it the environment? Do you feel more comfortable in less formal surroundings? Think about the summer when you worked as a sales person in a department store. Did you enjoy interacting with people in a sales capacity? How does that experience compare with being a waiter? Would you rather serve people or sell them? These are the kinds of questions you need to begin asking yourself.
SOCIAL
Evaluate your social environment. What do you do in your spare time? What hobbies are you passionately pursuing? Are you a sports enthusiast, a musician, a writer, or a film buff? Do you enjoy cooking elaborate meals for guests? Did you just redecorate your apartment on a shoestring budget with dazzling results? Are you a whiz at fixing your Mends' motorcycles?
These activities you enjoy may have important career relevance. An interest in wine-tasting could lead to a career as a sales representative for a winery. A love of travel might lead to a career in the import-export business. A passion for entertaining might suggest a position in a public relations firm.
On the more personal side, look at your relationships with your family and friends. Do you have a lot of friends, or just a few close ones? Do you like being with groups of people, or would you rather be alone? Are you the one your sister turns to if she needs advice, or is it your older brother? Are you patient with your grandparents or do you get easily irritated with them? What kind of person are you? What type of social environment do you like best?
Once again, these are the questions you need to begin asking yourself in order to determine what skills and knowledge you have that you would like to use and develop further. It's a process you will repeat over and over again throughout your career, and your approach will become more sophisticated and more refined as you gain experience. What you should learn, however, from this initial exercise in self-assessment is how to identify and categorize your skills and interests so that they begin fitting into easily recognizable patterns.
What types of people were involved? What equipment or materials did you use? In the service of what goal or ideal?
Although there are no magic numbers, you should probably come up with six to eight experiences. Write them out in great detail, as if you were explaining them to a young child. Very specific experiences are easier to analyze. Now, put them away for a while. When you come back to them, examine them closely for patterns of skills, themes of interest. Probably an isolated skill is not important. What you want to uncover are the patterns.
Once you've completed this exercise, have other people look at what you've done. Ask them to write down the skills you were using, and the values which seem to predominate. Self-assessment is difficult to do, because you're never objective about your own background. There is a tendency to undervalue your experience. An ideal group is two or three others who are going through the process. Each member is then equally committed to working hard.
Since the process of examining your background may be somewhat new to you, let us give you a sample scenario. Say that you are a sociology major with significant coursework in psychology. Your part-time and summer work experience includes a head cook/camp counseling self.
