Personality, Interests, Values, Skills, and Strengths
The standard advice we often hear is ‘follow your passion.’ However, this is not helpful if you’re unsure of your passion. Rather than focusing on finding a ‘passion,’ naming and understanding what you’re good at (strengths) and gaining a better understanding of your personality, characteristics, values, and interests can help you make decisions that lead towards education and a career that fits. Finding your passion may happen over time by trying and reflecting on things. It isn’t something we can discover through one simple online test or quick self-reflection.
Self-awareness typically involves exploring five personal characteristics: personality, interests, values, skills, and strengths.
Personality
Interests
These are the things you enjoy learning about and/or doing. For example, interests could include cooking, creating apps, playing basketball, fashion and/or learning about history. Other terms that you’ll see used for career interests are realistic, investigative, artistic, social, intriguing, and conventional. You can learn more about career interests here: https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/career-interests
Values
Skills
Your skills are the specific abilities you possess because of knowledge gained, practice, and aptitude. For example, through practice and training, a person can gain the skills of using Excel, working in teams, using a new language, repairing an airplane engine, or taking care of young kids. Each profession has many specific skills but there are also more general “essential employability skills” that you can learn more about here: http://www.tcu.gov.on.ca/pepg/audiences/colleges/progstan/essential.html
Strengths
Think of your strengths as a combination of the things you are naturally good at, that you enjoy using, and that you have put a lot of effort into improving. Finding a job that uses your strengths can lead to work that is both enjoyable and that you are good at. You can learn more about strengths here: https://www.ted.com/talks/shane_lopez_focusing_on_your_strengths
Enjoyable Accomplishments
One great way to reflect on your values, strengths, interests, and personality is to think of times you felt proud of yourself and were at your best. These are often when you enjoy a process and feel a sense of accomplishment, which is why we call these ‘enjoyable accomplishments’! These situations can be from any part of your life (work, volunteer, school, hobbies, etc.) or any time. Take a minute to describe three specific experiences you would define as ‘enjoyable accomplishments.’
Once you have written your experience “stories,” identify a few values, skills, strengths, interests, and personality traits you notice in each story. After writing them all out, look through them and ask yourself, “What common themes keep reoccurring? Which ones feel most true in most situations?”
Example
| Enjoyable Accomplishment | Description/Story | Values, Skills/Strengths, Interests, Personality demonstrated |
|---|---|---|
| Example 1: Eco Club | Story 1: As part of her high school’s Eco Club, Jane Career was given leadership responsibilities for the end-of-year hike. She organized the schedule, booked transportation, delegated food preparation to other club members, and communicated the details. On the day of the end-of-year hike, everything went smoothly and her friends thanked her for organizing such a fun trip! Jane really enjoyed both the organizing process and being outdoors with her friends. | Values: nature, environmentalism, professionalism, activity Skills/Strengths: organizing, communication, delegating, leadership Interests: hiking, organizing Personality: take charge, fun, social, responsible |
| Example 2: Assisting a senior | Story 2: While walking home one day, Jane noticed a man slowly crossing the road at a traffic light. He was not going to make it across before the light turned red so she rushed over to hold traffic and allow him to finish crossing. Once on the other side, the man thanked her and expressed frustration at his own slow pace. Jane joked that maybe it wasn’t him that was too slow, but the light that was too fast! He thought that was pretty funny. | Values: kindness and caring, safety, humour, respect for elders Skills/Strengths: making quick decisions, valuing human connection, communicating one-on-one, reducing frustration and anxiety Interests: people, helping others Personality: live by my values, prefer human interaction but usually one-on-one, responsible |
Your Turn!
- Here is a downloadable Enjoyable Accomplishments Worksheet available as a (.docx) or fillable (.pdf) that you can fill in and save for your own reference. You can choose and describe any number of enjoyable experiences.
- Writing down your enjoyable experiences and regularly reflecting on your experiences and accomplishments can help to build increased personal insight. Consider experimenting a bit by telling your story to a close friend or family member to see what characteristics they notice!
- Finally, if you are completing the Self-Reflection Career Summary Sheet – (.docx) or (.pdf)- go ahead and add the values, skills/strengths, interests, and personality traits you discover from your Enjoyable Accomplishments Worksheet.
“1.6 Career Mind Mapping “from Centennial College Career Success Guide Copyright © by Career Services and Cooperative Education, Centennial College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
