Explore Yourself
Choosing a career starts with understanding your interests, skills, values, and strengths. Career assessments can help you identify patterns and discover careers or career pathways you may want to explore.
Career Exploration and Assessment
Your future career will provide more than just a paycheck. The average person spends an average of 35-40 years in the workforce - making sure you find the right career that fits not just your monetary needs, but also your interests, values, and talents is important. When you find a career that fits your passions, you will find greater success and more opportunities.
Assess Yourself
Interest assessments, such as the ACT career assessment, are a great way to find the career that best suits you by discovering what really interests you and what you value most. Assessments:
- Identify your strengths, skills, and areas of interest
- Match your results to career pathways or industries
- Link career pathways to specific careers and salary expectations
- Link careers to education and training requirements
- List education requirements that will lead to potential college majors
- Help narrow your list of potential colleges to those that fit your interest area and price range
You should use a variety of assessments to help you chart your course. You can take the assessment on your own, or work with an ICAN advisor by scheduling a career assessment appointment, Here are some options.
My ACT
The MyACT career assessment features three short interest inventories that identify potential career pathways that fit your interests and values. The three inventories take about 15 minutes and provide instant results through the creation of a Career Map and Major Map. Take the assessments.
CareerOneStop
CareerOneStop offers a variety of free career assessments that help high school students explore interests, skills, and work values to identify potential career paths. These tools provide personalized career suggestions and connect students to relevant occupational and educational information. Visit careeronestop.org/explorecareers/assessments.
Holland Occupational Themes (RIASEC) Test
Holland Occupational Themes is a theory of personality that focuses on career and vocational choice. It groups people on the basis of their suitability for six different categories of occupations; Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional (RIASEC). Take the assessment.
Princeton Review Career Quiz
Princeton Review Career Quiz is a short, personality-based assessment that helps high school students identify careers and work environments that align with their interests and preferences. By analyzing how students respond to different scenarios, the quiz matches them with potential career paths and personality types. Visit princetonreview.com/quiz/career-quiz.
Next Steps
Find your passion, or just an area of interest through assessments and then ask questions. Research your future so you can reach your full potential and have every opportunity for the success-filled life you envision.
If you think research tends to be boring, it might be because you haven't been excited about the topic. Discovering what you will do for the rest of your life is an interesting process that will help you do well in high school. The only way to find out if a career is for you is to learn all about it.
Use your career assessment results to answer important questions like the ones below. You assessment should help you dive in and provide all the information requested in the following questions.
