Carrer and Education
What am I doing?
The purpose of this unit is to allow you to focus on establishing your interests, skills, and accomplishments as these factors play a role in career planning. Many of the activities will help you determine what types of jobs might be of interest to you. To find a career that fits you best, you need to know how you are designed. Self assessment - or identifying what's important to you - is the first step towards making effective career decisions.
Your career foundation is based on:
- Who you are?
- What you do best?
- The places or atmospheres that give you the most energy, and
- The purpose that motivates you
During this unit you will learn about the importance of aligning your personal interests and attributes to your education and career plans. You will start the process of considering what options are available to you in the workforce and at post-secondary institutions. By the end of the unit you should be able create a transition plan from high school.
Why am I doing it?
By the end of this unit you will be able to:
- relate personal attributes and interests to education and career planning
- compare a variety of post-secondary education and training institutions and programs
- relate labour market information (e.g., types of employment, required skills and education, salary range) to careers of interest
- demonstrate an understanding of employability skills (e.g., communication, problem solving, teamwork)
- develop a personal education and career plan to support the achievement of education and career goals
How will it be marked?
You will be asked to create your own career package using various online planning guides. This unit will comprise 10% of your Planning 10 mark.
Personality Style
Personality Style
Easy going, outgoing, shy, disgruntled, a good listener, a loner - who are these people? Or could it be just one person in a variety of situations, one person with many personality traits?
Each person has individual, non-physical qualities that make his or her personality unique. While there is no single definition of personality, it will:
- be the outward sign of an inner self;
- affect how one relates to, interacts with, and reacts to other people;
- affect one's view of oneself;
- be different from any other person's personality; and
- be developed over a lifetime, and will continue to develop.
Personality is a result of heredity, environment, and other factors. Heredity is the unique genetic information which you are born. It affects physical appearance, gender, ability to learn, emotional tendencies, and other characteristics. Environment, or the surrounding conditions that affect a person's development, is influenced by family, home life, friends, culture, school and the media.
A Metaphor for Personality
"True Colors" is a metaphor for understanding human characteristics. It helps you see and use different ways of rewarding and supporting people's natural behaviours and values. Behind it, driving it, are these fundamental beliefs and guiding principles: people are intrinsically different. They strive to achieve a sense of self-worth from very different perspectives. Identification with these differences can be accomplished through the use of metaphors such as "characters" and "colour."
The "True Colors" metaphor has been developed from the work of Keirsey. According to Keirsey, there are four different colour types (Gold, Blue, Yellow and Green). A ll colours types are different in fundamental ways and they all want different things. They have different motives, needs, and drives. They analyze, conceptualize, understand, and learn differently. These differences create natural barriers to interpersonal communication, making understanding between people of different types difficult.
It is important to keep in mind that all people have all four colors as part of their personalities, although one will predominate. For instance, Orange is my first Color, with Green and Blue about equal as my second Color, and least like me is Gold. It is good for me to learn about all the colors, but to pay special attention to the characteristics of Golds if I am to understand and work well with them.
Take the True Colour Personality Quiz
Are you a thinker, always analyzing, like a GREEN? Do you prefer inspiring people and building their self-esteem as a BLUE? Are you the responsible one who is always on time and keeping everyone else on time like a GOLD? Or do you thrive on entertaining and persuading people, like an ORANGE? Take the following quiz now and find out what color you are.
Creating a Personality Profile
Creating a Personality Profile
This lesson will combine what you already know about your personality, interests and skills with your values, experiences, multiple intelligence's and passions, as well as the kinds of situations or people that might hold you back. Whew!
When you have completed this lesson, you will have developed a Personal Profile that will help you to make decisions, set goals and work towards a career direction.
To know yourself is a complex and involved process that changes as you move and grow through life. It is an effort that can be complicated by information that is available but sometimes hidden or not acknowledged. However, much information is available to you, including your past and present; and your dreams for the future.
It is important for you to consider your life up to the present, (the experiences you have had and the actions you have taken). It is important for you to reflect on your thoughts and ideas about a wide variety of topics. Think about the person you are today, but also consider the thoughts you may have about the person you would like to be in the future.
This is a time to think about the many qualities that you already possess. It is important for you to consider a wide variety of interests, abilities, skills, personality traits, beliefs, limitations, and strengths. Also, it is important for you not to limit your thoughts. You have many characteristics and traits; it's your advantage to consider them all.
Useful self-assessment does not just happen; careful thought and effort are needed. As well, assessing oneself once is not enough. Just as the process of living is ongoing, so is the process of self-assessment. Reflection and thought about oneself is a continuing experience that can be both informative and enjoyable.
Part of building a Personal Profile requires you to consider different aspects of who you are. One way of reflecting on these aspects is collect information on your learning and personality styles using self assessments. The online quizzes you are about to complete are designed to help you find out more about yourself. The information you collect helps you build a profile. Like a chain link fence, you will find the information from the different assessments can be connected together.
Please be reassured that your self-assessments are meant to serve as a guide to help you discover yourself. If you disagree with the results, that's okay. It's quite possible, that the questions are not always valid. When you receive what you perceive as a negative message, it is important to remind yourself that a negative message is an opportunity for improvement. In addition, there are positive sides to most negative messages. For example, if the results says you are shy, the positive side of shyness is the ability to be a good listener.
In addition to the quizzes done together in class, there are six self assessments to complete on your own. Be sure to keep track of your results as you go along so that you can complete the upcoming Personal Profile assignment.
