Discover What You're Best At

Discover What You're Best At Perhaps you've recently completed your formal education and now are seeking your first or second job. Maybe you're re-entering the work force after several years as a homemaker, and you need to convert that experience into the salable skills needed in today's marketplace. You could be contemplating a job change because your current position inhibits your personal growth, limits your ability to excel, or does not provide sufficient recognition or rewards. Maybe you, like so many others, find yourself on the job by accident. You somehow stumbled into it, but now you know you're in the wrong line of work.

Discover What You're Best At Perhaps you've recently completed your formal education and now are seeking your first or second job. Maybe you're re-entering the work force after several years as a homemaker, and you need to convert that experience into the salable skills needed in today's marketplace. You could be contemplating a job change because your current position inhibits your personal growth, limits your ability to excel, or does not provide sufficient recognition or rewards. Maybe you, like so many others, find yourself on the job by accident. You somehow stumbled into it, but now you know you're in the wrong line of work. Whatever the present situation, you know that the decision you're about to make is too important to leave to chance, fate, or what your best friend thinks you should do. That's why I developed the National Career Aptitude System (NCAS) to answer your questions and steer you in the right direction. Aptitudes vs. Interests The NCAS measures your aptitudes--what you are capable of doing now and what you will be able to do in the future if given the opportunity to learn. It is very different from an interest inventory, which samples what you think you might like to do. An interest inventory tends to deal with the present, what you think you might enjoy now, but it can't possibly predict whether your interests will stay the same or change as your life experience broadens. So don't choose a career solely on the basis of your present interests--they will probably change. Another weakness of interest inventories is that they're very subjective, based only upon your own image of yourself. They don't assess your actual ability to learn or perform certain tasks. Unfortunately, your interest in a subject doesn't necessarily guarantee that you'll find a job. And you may not even be very good at it, much less successful. The NCAS not only evaluates your knowledge and the present status of your abilities, it also predicts the career areas in which you are most likely to develop and succeed in the future. And while no aptitude test can tell you what you must be, if you know what your strengths are, you can find advantageous ways to use them. When you understand your weaknesses you can avoid being trapped by them. Save time: You can save precious years by determining your aptitudes before you choose your college program or career by trial and error. Save money: You may save thousands of dollars by selecting the right college or technical school program. And you won't need an expensive evaluation at a career testing center and hours of counseling. Understand your strengths: Aptitude measurement will help you identify and quantify your career potential objectively and show you the areas in which your abilities can best be developed. It will help you discover your capacity for learning new skills and help you realize what you are capable of achieving. Learn your weaknesses: Understand your weaknesses so that you do not fall victim to them. Gain encouragement: You will gain information that encourages you to change your job and pursue a career in a different direction from the one you now follow--or it may convince you to continue with your current pursuits. Set appropriate goals: Preparing for your future means setting appropriate career goals. While it may be true that you want to "do your own thing," you should first find out what your own thing is. How Does It Work? The NCAS is based on a professionally devised battery of self-administered and self-scored career aptitude tests that have been in use for over 30 years. The tests measure your strengths and indicate your weaknesses in the areas of understanding business situations, clerical speed and accuracy, logical reasoning, mechanical reasoning, numerical concepts, and understanding personal and social situations. After taking these tests, you will be able to go through the lists of careers for which your aptitudes are most suited. Choose those that are most appropriate for your ambition and level (or prospective level) of education. Here are a few sample career areas. Business: If you have done well on this test, you most likely will be able to supervise, delegate, manage, negotiate, organize, persuade, sell, or promote. Clerical: Your potential for working rapidly and accurately with minute details may be evidenced by this test. It shows your aptitude to compile statistics, decode materials, schedule events, catalog data, or keep projects within a preset timetable. Logic: Doing well here shows you most likely have the skill to adjudicate disagreements, analyze data, create new ideas, design data systems, systematize and simplify involved problems, or draw conclusions rapidly. Mechanical: This area indicates your ability to construct buildings, design patterns, invent new machinery, adjust electrical equipment, work with precision, design company logos, or visualize new applications. Numerical: Scoring well here shows you have the talent to audit financial records, budget expenses, compute solutions, evaluate net worth, program computers, survey land areas, prepare tax forms, or plan tax strategies. Social: With a good score, you should be quite able to advise people, counsel people, interview people, mediate between sides, instruct pupils, motivate others, provide consultations, or resolve personal conflicts. Your scores and career guidance assessments are valuable tools, and should be used in conjunction with the advice of career guidance counselors, management consultants, placement agencies, and job counselors. But this could be the single most important piece of objective information you can give them about yourself. Include the results on your resume. Discuss your aptitudes with possible employers with assurance, and back up the discussion with your test results. You can use your results to help plan your curriculum in high school, college, adult-education evening school, professional school, courses in the armed forces, or graduate school. These results should answer three questions: Do you belong where you are? If you have no direction, how can you find it? Are you really bored or dissatisfied in your job? Career assessments can often help you discover what else you can do (or should do) without leaving your present company. I wish you much success in the 21st Century! Linda Gale is the author of Discover What You're Best At, Stay or Leave, Discover Your High Tech Talents, and The National Career Directory. The former executive director of Career Aptitude Testing, Linda also wrote career columns and other articles for the Danbury News-Times, National Business Employment Weekly, St. Louis Globe Democrat, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Miami Herald.