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Career Assessments Myth #3: Only About Careers?

3/24/2014

Myth 3: The information revealed about yourself from a career assessment relates only to your career.

False!

Career Picture, Life Picture

It is often surprising to clients that our meetings reveal more to them about themselves than just career-related data. In the first hour or two of the consultation, we explain a couple of frameworks that help to explain basically how you are different from others. From this, you begin to learn not only about your unique ways of experiencing the world, but you also begin seeing aspects of yourself that you may have neglected because of any number of life circumstances. The goal is to help you see your natural talents and how they can be optimally applied to careers.

As we progress through this discussion, however, you may begin to understand how past experiences have shaped your everyday behaviors, both at work as well as your everyday life. Then, we begin the process of helping you fully comprehend what you truly enjoy in life and how your life may need to change in fundamental ways to achieve that happiness. While no one has an entirely ideal support system in place in their lives to help them move toward their ideals, from this discussion you may discover that you have more opportunities to make changes than you might have originally thought!

Yes, career choice is a personal, individual decision and we at EPIC Career are committed to helping you sort through the many aspects of your life to discover just how you can move toward your ideal career goals. Are your current career prospects weighing you down in ways that stifle potential happiness in the rest of your life? Are you ready to move forward in your career in ways that will move your entire life forward toward your ideals? At EPIC Career, we are here to help.

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Career Assessments Myth #4: Individual Choice?

3/21/2014

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Myth 4: You must choose one of the professions listed on a career assessment to achieve career success.

False!

Your Career Fit

Consultation with career assessments includes discussion of a wide range of facets of the client’s personality including their preferred ways of understanding new information, decision making and organizing their environments. Once we reach the point in the discussion of considering a career focus, clients have unearthed a new, expanded perspective about their innate talents and skills that they most enjoy using. By this point, clients have often developed an understanding of what professions would likely prove to be a strong fit for them and, of those, which specifically they might want to pursue. If they have not, the professional titles are available from the assessments. We then review commonalities across the professions to gain a picture of the main elements of a career that would be optimal for the client.

Career choice is a personal decision and the fit is as unique as each individual. Whether they move forward with a profession listed on the assessments or not, from this discussion, an individual career plan emerges.

Do you feel like you go to work each day without excitement or passion? Do you seek a job that you will enjoy and a career that you can foresee enjoying throughout the long term? At EPIC Career, we are here to help.

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Career Change or Career Reframe?

3/12/2014

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Client Question: I've felt dissatisfied for a while now in my career, but I'm not sure that I want to resign and go back to school, either. I feel stuck. Any advice?

EPIC Career Answer: This may surprise you - you could be in the right place already without knowing it. Yes, many of my adult clients embark upon major life changes as a result of my consultations with them. Typically, they begin college courses or start networking toward new career fields. However, I am amazed at how many of my clients do not change jobs. These non-job changers usually have one thing in common: they did not know that they had made many wise career-related decisions already.

Career Rut

Often, the aspects of their jobs that they dislike have been glaring at them for so long that they have forgotten about the positive aspects. These individuals are often highly successful in their careers. What they hadn’t considered much lately are the many decisions throughout their lives that led them to where they are today. These decisions are not mistakes; rather, they have led to many real, positive results.

Once we examine their career assessment results together, they often begin to see their background in a more realistic light. While their results often describe job titles that they had never before considered, they also include valuable information like the client's preferred work environments, learning style, leadership style and other information. These data help them organize their past career decision-making into a sequence of events that have allowed them to develop many of their innate talents and successfully adapt their weaknesses.

Same Career, Different Perspective

The conversation then shifts from "How can I get out of this job?" to "How can I adapt my behavior at work such that I continue to be successful, but also feel fulfilled in other aspects of my life?" We will then likely examine the ways in which changing a few basic habits in the course of a normal workday can go a long way toward building a new perspective about their current jobs. It can also help them see how they might pursue new non-work related interests that may help develop the whole person, beyond just their identity at work.

Are you feeling unsure about your career choices of the past? Do you feel stuck in a career that you dread potentially spending the rest of your life pursuing? Do you think you have potential for success in your current job field, but need some help figuring out how to make it more satisfying? If so, at EPIC Career we are here to help.

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The Top 5 Myths about Career Assessments

3/11/2014

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For the next several posts, I will be counting down the top 5 myths individuals I’ve worked with tend to believe about career assessments. Stay tuned for the complete list!

Myth 5: Assessments like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) and Strong Interest Inventory® generate 100% flawless results.

False!

So how can I vouch for them as a career consultant? The answer is that these assessments, including the MBTI are not intended to be used without the guidance of an experienced practitioner. Unlike a medical test, for example, that confirms whether a patient is carrying a certain virus, psychological instruments point to general tendencies. They are not designed to be provide a diagnosis! Rather, the responses on the instrument can serve as a lens through which to understand the client. I also advise clients to try to answer as though they are living in an “ideal world” to try to prevent responses that are provided because the client thinks that s/he “should” answer a particular way.

A Personal Example

For example, my wife took the MBTI as part of a requirement in a college course. When the professor scored the assessment and gave each student his/her profile, my wife did not recognize herself on the description. Then, the professor placed students into groups with their similar “type” so that they could find commonalities amongst each other. Again, my wife felt like a fish out of water in this group. For this reason, she did not hold much faith in the MBTI assessment at all.

Years later, she re-took the exam. This time, however, she tried to answer with the “ideal world” framework in mind. It revealed that one critical point of her prior results were inaccurate. With this correction, her entire profile changed, revealing a profile with which she really identified. It was a genuine “Eureka!” kind of moment. With these new results, she better understood why her current field of study and career prospects were not such a good fit.

Understanding Inaccurate Results

So why were her first results so skewed? That is a complicated answer, and it points to why it is so necessary to discuss results with an experienced practitioner. In her case, Western culture tends to exalt certain preferences – like logic, hard science, and rationality – above other preferences, such as empathy, cooperation, and emotion. When she answered the assessment the first time, it became clear that she was answering what she considered the right, university-approved kind of answers should be. She knew those initial answers did not reflect how she saw herself, but she blamed the instrument, rather than the way in which the assessment was administered.

This case is actually common. My goal for each client is to help him or her see how our world needs people who embody all of these types, despite what our culture tends to reinforce. In sum, no career assessment is intended to be fool-proof. Take your raw results as a starting point for a rich discussion about yourself. At EPIC Career, we are here to help.

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Helping the Teen or the Parent?

3/11/2014

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I started career consulting wishing to use my career assessment and higher education leadership background to help individuals make a career plan. What I did not expect, however, is the impact my work with teens would have on their relationships with their parents. I have been amazed at how parents and teens have revealed that in addition to helping the teen develop well-formed career goals, the service has enhanced their mutual understanding of one another.

Parent Perspective

Based on assessment results, parents report improvement in how they interpret the personality proclivities of their teen after consultation. Specifically, they see how the unique talents and interests of the teen can translate into a significant career. They often report that they have wondered how their teen would adapt to the adult and work world. After consultation they understand the root of their teen’s behaviors and how their teen has already made adaptations in his/her life to overcome weaknesses. Upon reviewing this history, it becomes clear to parents that their teen is highly likely to continue successfully using their strengths and adapting for weaknesses in the same way throughout his/her life. When reviewing career roles typical of others like their teen from assessments based on decades of research, they also see how their teen is likely to act successfully throughout his/her future. Both teens and parents seem quite relieved to gain this insight.

Beyond Just College Major Choice

While I started career consulting with the main purpose of helping clients build focus around a career that they will love, I have found that the insight gained from career assessments has yielded enhanced understanding and communication among parents and teens. As a parent, have you felt unsure about how your teen’s interests, skills and overall personality could lead to college and career success? Have you worried about whether your teen will ever discover career success because you feel some of his/her behaviors or past decisions illuminate a future trend resulting in your teen being too unusual to “fit in?” At EPIC Career, our gold standard career assessments will reveal exactly how your teen’s responses relate to responses of individuals who have reported success in particular career fields. In addition, we help you better understand your teen such that a lifetime of success in particular career fields becomes clear. If you seek this level of insight about your teen, we at EPIC Career are here to help.

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Career Assessments Myth #3: Only About Careers?

Career Assessments Myth #4: Individual Choice?

Career Change or Career Reframe?

The Top 5 Myths about Career Assessments

Helping the Teen or the Parent?

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