Focus 2 Assignment: Career Assessment Program

Focus 2 Assignment – Reflection Upon completing the Focus 2 career assessment program, I am quite impressed at the quality of information it presents. It allowed me to not only look at careers that would fit my personality, but also those that take into consideration the fields I am already interested in. Also, as with any form of self-assessment, there were strengths and weaknesses that I did not expect based on how I feel I live my life currently. Beginning chronologically, the program had me complete two subjective, current measures of my professional career. Specifically, the Career Planning Readiness results were a bit embarrassing, given I have not done much to investigate the career I foresee as much as I should. I have concluded that

I struggled to determine if the tasks presented only sounded intriguing, or if they were ones that I could see myself doing; it made me want to be able to try and do some of the tasks to see how interested I would actually be. Also, what I came across often were situations that I was sure I would be able to do, but not as a job multiple times a week. I found a range of things interesting, primarily research, and treating injured or ill people, only after going through this assessment a few times to closely consider what engages me. My results were, in order of strength: Investigative, Social, and Artistic. While the investigative and artistic made sense, I was surprised by social, specifically the characteristic of ‘highly verbal’, as I tend not to be. However, the social category is also called ‘The Helpers’, which I can associate with. The juxtaposition of the Investigative category’s ‘prefer to work independently with minimum supervision’ and the Social’s ‘prefer to work with others’ was ironic, but, oddly enough, I notice myself shifting between those two ends

Rather than tying me to one side, like independent or social, it incorporated both in an ordinary way, which was a relief to find. The summary suggested fields such as teaching, counseling, psychology, religion, health, and some arts. Fortunately, health was included, which I am interested in, so I decided to investigate their informational page on physical therapy to compare. I was pleased to find among a long list of skills, all three of mine were included, as well as two of my values. Comparing strengths of my interests to those of a PT with its interest score graph turned out to be very similar except for the ‘realistic’ category, which I attribute to being hands-on. While I tend to not be in general, I am when it comes to physical activity and wellness