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Unit 1 Self-Assessments

Jaea Davidson

OGL 482

Arizona State University

October 22nd, 2023

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Insights From Kuder Career Interests Assessment

The Kuder Career Interest Assessment was highly valuable in providing me with new

ideas for career path directions and reinforcing some of the ideas I already had about where my

talents and interests will be most suited. Nearly all my occupational match results were followed

by “manager”, “coordinator”, or “specialist”. Throughout my studies in Organizational

Leadership, I have learned that being a leader is not the same as being a manager and that you

can lead in any role or sphere of life. However, I believe the best managers are also exceptional

leaders, and the position certainly reinforces and provides opportunity for my leadership

competency to shine. I was pleasantly surprised to see educating and development as my top

match, because I feel a calling to helping others reach their full potential. I used to be a barista

trainer at my store before promoting to management, and it was so intrinsically motivating to

curate the best possible experience and learning environment for new hires and then watch them

blossom in the following weeks, months, and even years. I absolutely resonate with falling under

the social category in the Holland Occupations Code System, and I now recognize that it’s

critical that I work in a space where I get to have human interaction, specifically in a group

setting as this is where I am most comfortable and most satisfied.

I was surprised by the people matches that resulted from this Kuder Assessment. The job

titles were all followed by “owner” or “president”, and I don’t see a future version of myself with

those titles for a couple of reasons. The first being that when I think of those labels, I don’t

associate them with the intimacy and human connection that I value in a workplace role. Perhaps

because organizations almost always have the bottom-line of growth and wealth, and I visualize

the top of an organizational pyramid to be highly disconnected with frontline workers. I feel

more drawn to middle management roles or roles in specific departments where I can be actively
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advocating for and serving a more intimate team. To add, I don’t see being an entrepreneur or

CEO fitting into the work life balance that I highly prioritize. Excessive responsibility and time

consumption don’t leave enough space for me to be invested in my personal relationships and

hobbies. I value these more highly than any titles or monetary rewards.

Insights From the Skills/Work Values-Based Assessments

The work values inventory assessment was arguably the most helpful in understanding

what my priorities are as I look forward towards discovering my career pathway. I was ranked

highly on lifestyle, workplace, and coworkers. Having lifestyle ranked most highly on this

assessment coordinates with the results I got from all other assessments for this assignment. I

knew that a healthy work life balance was important to me, but this process has taught me just

how critical it is. I will keep this in mind while looking at job descriptions and asking questions

during the interview process to recognize how potential schedules and responsibilities will fit

with my life. Coworkers was not something I was initially considering to be a top value in the

workplace, but as an extroverted person I picture my “dream career” with a team who has a

family type dynamic and provides a great support system. Transactional and surface level

relationships don’t fill my cup, and this aligns with my competency in communication and team

dynamics. I have learned that having a cohesive team provides the greatest opportunity for

success. I intend to investigate a company’s culture and whether they value collaboration before

accepting a role, perhaps by doing a job shadow. Finally, I have been privileged enough to only

have worked in clean, safe, and comfortable places. I value workplace highly and would seek a

different position if my job started to feel unsafe or uncomfortable.

The rest of the metrics fell somewhere in the medium valued column, starting with

creativity, variety, supervision, prestige, achievement, security, income, independence, and then
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challenge. Creativity and variety align with my personality because I get very bored and feel

constricted when I don’t have some creative freedom or variety in my responsibilities. I have

never been someone who enjoys constantly following detailed instructions, I thrive when I can

add my own personality to a project or brainstorm without limitations. This matches my

competency in problem solving, because I don’t want to limit my own ideas or the ideas of my

team when brainstorming solutions. I gained insight in my strategic planning courses about how

creative action can set you apart from other organizations and have the biggest pay off. In

contrast, I was surprised that challenge was my lowest rated value. I can become overwhelmed

somewhat easily, which is an area of opportunity for me. I want to be challenged in the

workplace, but not so much that I constantly bring work home with me or become excessively

stressed. I must search for roles that I am qualified for, but still provide me with a healthy

challenge that keeps me motivated and engaged.

Insights From the Motivation and Career anchors Assessment

As a result of taking the Motivation and Career Anchors assessment, I learned that my

primary career anchor is lifestyle, and my secondary anchor is service/dedication. I immediately

found these results to be intuitive and resonated with the motivating career factors that the test

aligned me with. In contrast, I had my lowest scores in the high fifties for the pure challenge,

entrepreneurial creativity, and technical/functional competence. While these anchors are still

often important motivators for me personally and professionally, I find them to be much less

essential or of priority for me. Overall, the results of this test were seemingly successful at

helping me to pinpoint what I value and what occupational conditions will lead me to a

sustainably satisfactory career. In this section I will discuss what insights I have been able to

derive from the anchors and the process holistically.

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First, the lifestyle career anchor coordinates with my current healthy work and life

balance, as well as the vision I have for my future boundaries when it comes to occupation. My

manager helps me build a schedule that allows ample time to be dedicated to my schoolwork,

family, friends, and hobbies. Having this time allows me to bring my best and whole self to work

and direct all my attention to serving my followers and driving results. Additionally, I value

learning highly, and to be fulfilled in this area I simply cannot be constrained to organizational

learning. I need time boundaries that give me the space to read, write, and explore myself and the

world around me in my free time. This is even more true when it comes to my relationships

because having adequate time to maintain my friendships and connect with my family is far

more important to me than anything else. A job where I can clock out and not think about work

again until the next day is going to be imperative for the life balance I am looking for. I also

must have paid time off available and a supportive and flexible schedule.

My top two career anchors were hardly different in scores, the second one being sense of

service/dedication to a cause. This anchor being a priority for me wasn’t a surprise because

throughout my schooling I have strongly identified with the term servant leadership. I find

immense joy in developing the baristas at my store and empowering them to reach individual and

collective success. I would even go as far as saying it’s my favorite part of my job, and certainly

the most rewarding. In my future career, stakeholder relationships will surely drive me to be the

best that I can be. Moreover, being a part of an organization that I align with is imperative to my

overall happiness and commitment. I could never be satisfied or whole working somewhere that

has a mission and values that conflict with what I stand for as a person. Some of these

considerations include environmental impact and stance on various social justice issues.

Personally, leading others provides me with a sense of service, it gives me a purpose and it’s
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what I will continue to do. I hope to find a workplace where I can lead a mission that I am

wholeheartedly am passionate about, with a team that shares my same excitement and

willingness to grow and learn.

Insights From Additional Self-Assessment Tools

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of getting an extensive twenty-three-page Neuro

Color report that assessed my personality patterns both in the workplace and outside of work.

One section of the report described my optimal workplace, and almost every metric has an

uncanny relation to the previous assessments I have discussed. I was told that I need beyond a

superficial connection to customers and colleagues, as well as a strong workplace support

system. I have always had both things in the few jobs that I have worked thus far, and it would

be incredibly obvious and alienating if I lost that human connection in my next role. Moreover,

the assessment describes a work environment where my voice is heard, and there are regular

forums where people can share ideas. This reminds me of a class where we learned how valuable

it is to engage in dialogue and create shared meaning with others. I have had so much

professional and academic experience with teamwork, and I do find the idea of dialogue and

group brainstorming to be intuitive. I could see myself thriving in an environment where I feel

confident sharing my ideas and can tap into my creative side. A result that I hadn’t considered

before is my desire to work somewhere that gives me full sensory stimulation. I resonate with

this one because I do need some variety in tasking to keep me interested. I picture someplace that

is very open, where individuals don’t take themselves too seriously and self-expression is valued.

This additionally connects to working in a place that is diverse and inclusive, one of my core

competencies, because engaging with all sorts of people will push me to grow and encourage me

to learn new perspectives that can enhance my leadership.

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The next assessment I took was the Arizona State Me3: Major and Career Quiz. The quiz

informed me that my strengths are SEA, standing for social, enterprising, and artistic.

Enterprising relates to leadership qualities that I highly value, such as being resourceful and

taking initiative. Social and artistic are adjectives that people close to me would use to describe

me, so I would agree with those being my strengths. Aesthetically I appreciate when things are

organized and personalized, so perhaps working in a role somewhere where I get to create

documents and organizational tools would be highly satisfying for me and allow me to be artistic

in that way. Not surprisingly, all my top results for career matches for this assessment were

related to teaching or coaching others. I know that I am not exceptionally interested in working

with children, which was the focus in my results. However, my main discovery from this

assessment and others is that developing individuals is a passion of mine that I can turn into a

career that focuses on teaching, coaching, or training. To add, I could imagine being someone

who works on a team of people who develop and set standards around a company’s training and

orientation practices. A role in this sphere would be incredibly fulfilling and allow me to shape

an organizations culture.

The final assessment I will discuss is my results from the HumanMetrics Jung Typology

Test. I was scored with a high preference for extraversion over introversion, moderate preference

of intuition over sensing, distinct preference of feeling over thinking, and no preference when it

comes to perceiving over judging. I was especially interested in what the ENFPs communication

skills are like. This assessment suggests that I have an exceptional ability to convince others and

earn their trust. I would associate these with my strong ability and feeling of responsibility to

advocate for others. Another metric I found helpful was my openness in discussing my feelings

or helping others work through their own. I agree with this depiction of myself because one of
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my core competencies is empathy. I often get close with people quickly because they feel

comfortable opening themselves up to me and my strong ability to empathize enables me to

understand them quickly. I will refer to this site in the future when learning how to communicate

with different personality types. I would imagine having a team complete this test and share their

results with one another would be incredibly helpful in opening up communication and

understanding one another’s strengths.