Understanding your skills, interests, values, and personality is the first step toward choosing a career path.
Learning what you enjoy, what you’re good at, and what you value most in your life or work environment is necessary before you embark on exploring possible careers. View the sections below for resources to help you as you reflect.
- Skills
Throughout the course of your life, you have gained competencies in many areas. Think about your accomplishments, and the talents that enabled you to succeed. Common skill areas include: interpersonal, communication, leadership and organizational.
For help assessing your skills, see our Skills Inventory.
- Transferable Skills
Transferable skills are areas of strength (personal qualities) you can transfer from one environment to another such as home, school, work, volunteerism, or extra-curricular activities. They can be used in many different environments, across occupations, regardless of the type of work. You may have attained transferable skills from:
- Volunteering, not-for-profit organization, or community service
- School organizations or service learning
- Job shadowing
- Part-time jobs or internships
- Academic courses
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the top 10 personal qualities employers seek are:
- Leadership
- Ability to work in a team
- Written communication skills
- Problem-solving skills
- Strong work ethic
- Analytical/quantitative skills
- Technical skills
- Verbal communication skills
- Initiative
- Computer skills
For help assessing your skills, see our Skills Inventory.
- Interests
What interests do you have that could be translated into a career?
- Which projects or accomplishments have been most fulfilling and why?
- What has been your favorite class to date and why?
- What has been your favorite internship/job? Extracurricular activity? Hobby?
- In your previous jobs, what did you like and dislike?
See our worksheets for help on clarifying your interests:
- Values
Values play an integral role in career satisfaction. Do you prefer risk or stability? Variety or routine? Teamwork or autonomy? Competition or collaboration?
These tools can help you identify your values and understand your family and cultural influences:
- Personality
Understanding your personality preferences is an important part of choosing a fulfilling career path. Personality can be defined as a combination of qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character, which influence how you see, experience, and interact with the world.
Reflect on the questions below as a first step in thinking about your personal traits:
- How would your friends or family describe you?
- How and with whom do you prefer to spend your time?
- How do you like to approach new projects or activities?
- How do you typically make big decisions?
- How do you prefer to go about your day?
- Competencies & Career Readiness
Read more about competencies and career readiness, here.
- Additional Career Exploration Tools & Activities
- What Color is Your Parachute?: Companion piece to the best-selling career book in the world; includes information for career changers.
- What’s Your Skillset: This website is directed at women but has great information for any career seeker. Free registration gives you access to What’s Your Skillset.
- Career Interests Game: A fun way to start thinking about how your interests and personality will fit with specific work environments and careers.
- O*Net Online Skills Search: This online questionnaire links your skills to a variety of occupations.
You can also learn about where and how you excel by participating in extracurricular clubs and activities. Tufts provides many opportunities to get involved. Being active outside of class can illuminate new areas of interest and help you develop career-related skills such as teamwork, leadership, and effective communication.
Once you’ve identified what’s meaningful to you, start to research related jobs and careers and begin to refine your options.
