Myth 2: Because I am happy in my career, career assessments could in no way help me advance in my career.

False!

Making the Case

Career success is wonderful! It is great when you enjoy your career and earn a salary that meets your needs. It's even better to feel you have earned appropriate credentials for your profession and strong references that will support many years of career advancement. My question is: do you know how to articulate your strengths? Yes, past achievements, educational attainment, and references speak for themselves, but is that your whole story? 

If you have ever been a hiring manager you know the conundrum. You have gone through all the appropriate interviews, checked all the references (which were all satisfactory), and involved all the appropriate people with whom the new hire might regularly work. But ultimately, the final decision still lies solely with you. How do you make the decision? What is the ultimate rationale that will help you decide that one applicant will truly be a better fit than any other candidate. The answer is "fit." You know that one candidate just fits in better with yourself or others and you think (often with no rational explanation) that that one is better than every other candidate. As candidates, how can we be the fit?

Being the "Fit"

How do we stack the odds in our favor for the greatest chance of showing that we are the best fit? Personality! We must understand how our natural personality strengths make us the optimal fit for the job. When I have hired, I have always known that all applicants that I have invited to interview have a strong shot at the job. What I ultimately want to hear, however, is what makes the candidates tick. What excites them at work? What successes have they enjoyed enacting that they describe as satisfying? I also want to hear about what is not so fun or not so interesting and how that applicant manages those tasks. These details are what make the applicant a human. After all, if I am hiring them, I want to know that I want to hang out with them in the workplace for a significant amount of time over many years. Personally, I do not want to hear about how they like to go fishing, skiing, shopping or anything else personal about their lives. I want to know about what they enjoy about work. Unfortunately, too often candidates do not convey this side of themselves, leaving the interviewer to only speculate about job fit as the candidate made no compelling case.

The Power of Self-Description

How does a successful professional understand these kinds of intangible, difficult to measure qualities about themselves and most importantly, how does one articulate these qualities to an employer? Career assessment is the key. At EPIC Career, we help you understand how you have always been and will always be. Yes, we all change and improve in many ways throughout our lives, but there are many aspects of ourselves that are quite stable. You need to be able to describe in what ways you are uniquely gifted at particular work-related tasks - how you have been in the past and will always be. You can then use examples from your work experience to verify that success. This information is so much more than saying am a "I good team player". It's better than using generic terms like "focused", "punctual", or "dependable".  (Shouldn't all workers be those things?!) 

Are you ready to stand out from the crowd by describing yourself to employers in ways that most applicants cannot even conceptualize about themselves? At EPIC Career, we are here to help.

I am often asked about differences that I have seen from my career consulting practice in men’s and women’s career choices.  Are men more likely than women to choose certain professions, for example?  Since I wrote about this topic in my doctoral dissertation, I thought I would address this here.  While my study revealed differences that I somewhat expected, I was intrigued by changes that I discovered in these differences as a function of age.

Gender Differences

My study revealed that men were more likely than women to choose professions that required much coursework in science and mathematics, such as engineering or medicine.  Women, in contrast, were more likely than men to choose helping-related, or artistic careers such as teaching, psychology/counseling, nursing or the arts.  The higher the socio-economic status of the woman’s family, the more likely she was to choose a traditionally male-dominated profession.

Age Differences

While these tendencies seemed somewhat expected from my experience helping people choose professions, what I found fascinating were the age differences.  As I reviewed the population that I studied from youngest to oldest, I found that younger men and women were less likely to report interests in professions traditionally dominated by their gender.  Put another way, the younger the man or woman, the less likely they were to choose professions typical of their gender. 

The Implication

For me, this means that in recent decades, both men and women have grown increasingly open to pursuing a wider range of professions.  I hope this information is helpful to those trying to make career choices.  Specifically, I hope that this will help individuals feel that they may choose a profession based far more on the degree to which it excites them than upon the degree to which the profession is typical among those of their gender.