Employment Trends is knowing the facts for a successful future, and why making the right career/education choice can save you money.
Career assessments can open up a window to potential opportunities by helping you to uncover the tasks, experience, education and training needed for your next career move. Assessments such as the combined Myers Briggs and the Strong Interest Inventory can be effective in helping you identify potential careers that may match your skills, interests and personality, and help you determine how well you may be suited for that particular career.
Assessing your career choices from time-to-time can be a valuable exercise. For example, if you find yourself in a job unrelated to your college major, you’re not alone. Research shows that just 27 percent of college graduates are working in a job that matches their major field of study. (See graph below) When you take the cost of that college education into consideration, you may not be getting the best value for your education dollars. Career assessments provide you with the information you need to make better career decisions, and help you avoid spending money on ineffective and unnecessary education and career training.
Whether you embarked on your current career path years ago and simply want to confirm its viability, or are seriously re-evaluating your decision to pursue a new line of work, it’s important to take stock of your interests and aptitudes and apply these talents where most appropriate for you.
INTERESTS AND PASSION
Begin by asking yourself, what do I enjoy doing? Perhaps you like being creative, leading teams or being outdoors. Knowing your passions in life can open your eyes to a wide range of career choices and lead to more joy in your job.
SKILLS
You have many talents and skills, so take an inventory of them in order to find a career that will use them constructively. Look at how you can use your talents when evaluating different career options, and identify any skills you may need to develop.
VALUES
Your personal values—things like independence, helping others or giving and receiving recognition— are the principles that underpin your actions and the way you feel about work. By understanding your personal values, you will be able to select a career path that is in line with how you see the world and what matters most to you.
PERSONALITIES AND FIT
Your personality develops from life’s experiences and genetics, and can influence how well suited you are to different careers. Finding a career that aligns and fits with your unique personality will allow you to be genuine and fulfilled in your work.
LOOKING FOR A CAREER
When seeking a job, those careers highlighted by your Myers Briggs and Strong Interest Inventory assessments provide a quick place to start looking for new possibilities. Use the results to explore positions in these fields. Get past the knee-jerk reaction that none of those fields interest you. Be open to researching the different career venues, even if it’s only to figure out what you and that job have in common. There is a relatively high likelihood that there will be a connection between personality style, work values and culture. Read about these fields in your custom report from Myers Briggs/Strong Combined results, their economic outlook, and discover a lateral move you might make. This can result in greater career satisfaction, while building toward what might become your dream career.
Finally, apart from gaining clarity about yourself in terms of career choices, spending time on self-assessments will greatly improve your resume and interview success, and should form an ongoing part of managing your career.
As college costs have increased in recent decades, so too have many of the economic rewards for—as well as penalties for not— getting a four-year degree, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.
The analysis, which focuses on young adults in the first phase of their working lives, finds that the earnings gap by education level among
25- to 32-year-olds has widened significantly over the past half century. Those with a bachelor’s degree or higher are earning more in
inflation-adjusted dollars than their similarly educated counterparts from prior generations did at the same age, while those with a high school diploma or some college are earning less.
As a result of these shifts, young adults today experience more unequal earnings between education levels than did their same-aged peers in years past, mirroring the broader increase in income inequality that has become one of the defining features of American life. The Pew Research analysis focuses primarily on earnings, but also tracks other key measures of economic well-being, including employment characteristics, unemployment rates, duration of unemployment, poverty, wealth, personal income, and household income. With some minor variations, the overall story is the same across all of these measures: the gap in economic well-being by education level has grown over time.
The analysis produces a mixed picture, however, when it compares the overall economic well-being of today’s young adults with that of their same-aged counterparts in earlier times. While today’s young adults are doing better on some measures (earnings, adjusted median household income), they are doing worse on others (unemployment, poverty, wealth, and median personal income).
This overall lack of economic progress from one generation of young adults to the next is notable in view of the fact that today’s young adults are the best-educated generation in history. Some 34 percent of 25- to 32-year-old Millennials have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 25 percent of Gen Xers, 24 percent of Baby Boomers, and 13 percent of the Silent Generation at the same age.
The remainder of this chapter provides a comprehensive examination of the labor market and economic outcomes associated with attainment of a bachelor’s degree among today’s Millennial adults. First, it compares outcomes for Millennials who have at least a bachelor’s degree to those Millennials with some college education (but not a bachelor’s degree), and Millennials with a high school diploma but no further formal education. It also compares the economic outcomes of today’s young adults with those of earlier generations when they were the same age that Millennials are now.
GROW AND DEVELOP IN YOUR CURRENT POSITION
One of the most immediate applications of assessment results is to measure your current situation and look for areas you know need reinforcing. Learn to manage your career by making the most of your current situation. If you realize you are tense on the job rather than calm, what can you do to build more relaxation into your work schedule? If recognition is an important value to you, ask yourself, “Where does that recognition need to come from?” Recognition can come from your boss, a customer who is pleased with your extra effort or a colleague you helped out of a jam. You can also achieve self-recognition by setting and meeting attainable, measurable goals.
