AzCIS Interests Based Assessment Results Reflection

Angelina Spaulding
OGL 498 II: Pro Seminar
College of Letters and Sciences
Arizona State University

AzCIS Interests Based Assessment Results Reflection

Summarize your results when working through the interests-based assessments on
the AzCIS website. What particular career clusters stuck out to you? With respect to
the interest profiler, how did your interests score in the artistic / conventional /
enterprising / investigative / realistic / social categories? How could you use interestsbased assessments to help move your career and your life forward?
The interests based assessment administered by Arizona Career Information
System (2016) is a questionnaire that helps to determine how a person feels toward
specific activities. The traditional form asks an individual one hundred eighty questions,
and the individual must rate the activity as having interest by using only three responses:
like, unsure, or dislike. The results of the questionnaire are intended to help the
assesse identify potentially meaningful careers based on the responses. The results are
divided into five categories that help to provide a clearer direction when determining
potential fulfilling careers. Those five categories are: artistic, investigative, conventional,
enterprising, social and realistic. The remainder of this discussion will focus on the
personal results of the interests based assessment, and how this new information could
be beneficially for career development moving forward.
The first two categories that will be examined are artistic and investigative, which
equally scored a total of 28 points. An individual that has artistic drives enjoys work that
is non-bonding and allows for self-expression. Those individuals with investigative
interests tend to enjoy work that revolves around thinking and using ideas that allow for
greater use of mental capacities. To be completely honest, in no way did I expect my
artistic results to be so high, nor did I expect the investigative results to be equal in any
way to the artistic results. I started to think about the correlation between these two
interests. Those that have investigative interest, according to AzCIS (2016), have
leadership tendencies. In a decision making role it would likely be very beneficial to

implement divergent thinking to help reach resolutions. Creative thinking could aid in
satisfying multiple parities during a business negotiation, or help to settle dispute
amongst colleagues. Artistic interests and investigative interests seem to come form
two vary different facets, as the artistic ability seems to look beyond the information at
hand; whereas an investigative ability seeks to decipher information provided. These
two strong interests can be very beneficial when seeking out a variety of managerial or
administrative jobs. However, another shocking aspect that derived from this interests
assessment has been that my strongest occupational cluster resulted in being
Agricultural, Food, and Natural Resources (score of 13). The administrative and
managerial occupations scored at level 10, below other higher scoring occupations such
as Architecture, Arts, Hospitality and Sciences. The most pleasing aspect of this
assessment thus far has been that I am more artistic than I every believed to be. Prior
to this assessment I would have never considered that I would be interested in any sort
of career related to agriculture.
The third highest scoring related interests, scoring at one point less than the two
interests just discussed at 27, are conventional interests. Conventional interests are
those that focus on horizontal structure, procedures, standardization and routines.
Conventional individuals enjoy established information and data, and would rather not
implement ideas. This is the area of the interests assessments that I thought I would
have scored the highest. This is only slightly less than my highest scored interests, but
seems to be completely at the other end of the spectrum of artistic interests. Having a
clearly defined level of authority is something that is comforting for me, so I understand
how I would find interest in activities related to this structure. However, again based on
my occupational cluster results those careers, such as Law, Public Safety, and
Distribution logistics, ranked in the middle of the clusters with a score of around 10.

Business administration and management is something that I thought would be around

the top of the career clusters, but alas that was not the result. As I think about the
results from this assessment and the exploration of the portion of the AzCIS (2016) site
that discusses self-employment, it seems that a self employment option is an option that
I should considered; but one that I have never really considered before now. An
entrepreneur should be creative and open to new ideas, an entrepreneur needs to be
able to be investigative and inquisitive, and an entrepreneur should be conventional
when attempting to establish the model for a perceived organization. As I continue
thinking about future possibilities based on the results of the interests assessment, the
more I am driven to search out a life style based on what I create, and not what
someone will create for me.
This idea leads me into the fourth category: enterprising. I scored a 19 in this
category. This category is related towards activities that revolve around starting a
business venture, persuading others, and taking risks for profit. Here is my entrepreneur
hesitation. I take risks once I truly measure all of the potential options and outcomes of
the risk. I also feel that my negotiation skills are not the strongest. Two aspects of
entrepreneur life that should be at least considered moderate to high, and based on the
results of the interest assessment I would categorize them as moderate to high.
Finally the last two categories that will be explored are social and realistic, which
both scored at 10. Those that have social interests like activities that promote learning
and development. Those with realistic interests like activities that require hands on
work, such as manufacturing. This is also reflected in my occupational clusters results
that placed careers such as educational development, information technology, and
finance as some of my lower options. This is something that I agree with, and nothing
that had been surprising. This has made me question my interest in organizational

assessments slightly, because of lacking interest in development. However, based on

my investigative and conventional scores organizational an assessment is something
that I may consider pursuing. I could start my own consulting firm that conducts
organizational assessments. Then I would be able to engage my entrepreneurial spirit.
Out of the five categories assessed in the interest assessment, I had been the
most surprised by my artistic results. I was the least surprised by the investigative
results. This interest assessment has showed me that I should consider looking at
different occupational careers that require high-level decision-making, but also allow for
a broader range when it comes to conforming to expectations. This assessment has
challenged my original perspective, of fitting nicely into an administrative related field.
What I learned the most form this assessment is that I should expand my options, and
look beyond my perceived conceptions of that I think would be the best, and rather really
take a step back and really objectively examine activities that are truly of great personal
interest.