During your collegiate years, planning for your professional development is one of your most valuable tools for career success. Self-assessment is the most essential aspect of your planning; it is the only aspect likely to lead you to career greatness. It is your starting point in an evolving process of professional development. Evaluating self, knowing how you process information, make decisions, and interact with the world around you, will help you discover the career that is right for you. Without self-awareness, you may lose sight of who you are. If you do, you may find that when you start your career you no longer know why you chose that career in the first place, because personal growth and development affect professional development. At no point in the process of professional development should you lose sight of the personality pursuing the career. So important is self-assessment that it ought to be done with a career counselor, a person trained in career development.
 

Planning your career development includes making certain that you have basic, academic competencies and skills employers expect of every college graduate. In addition to looking for internships, employers look for academic competencies in the following areas: 

• Reading, writing and listening 
• Problem solving 
• Critical thinking 
• Mathematics, especially basic statistics 
• Computers, especially word processing 
• Core humanities, social sciences and sciences 
• A major discipline 
• Interpersonal relationships, demonstrated by coursework and by membership in organizations 
• Cultural diversity, demonstrated by coursework in ethnicity and by global study [see page 142]

Integrating curriculum design, internships, and self-assessment into an agreeable whole is complex, so consult your career counselor. Career counselors often can see enough pattern among your courses and experiences to point out your general fields of interest. The amount of time expended acquiring good grades in courses in the various academic areas may reveal your academic strengths to a career counselor, who is trained to identify patterns that you may not see of good grades in related academic areas, A's in writing courses, math-intensive courses, or business-related courses, for example. 

You might well remember Frederick Douglass' perception, however: [Your] education is [your] responsibility, no one else's. So consider starting your career development around the strengths and weaknesses you discover during an internship or summer job at the end of your freshman year or at any time throughout your academic or professional career.

Assessing your emotional intelligence  

A few lucky people discover the secret of career satisfaction and greatness, but most of us, for most of our lives, are torn between what we think we can do and what we (or others) think we ought to do. Many of your strengths are unrelated to academic skills or to the core competencies listed above. So in addition to evaluating your academic self early, you must also assess your emotional intelligence early, your interaction with people, so that you can begin developing your career goals as early as your freshman year. Career counselors are skilled in assessing emotional intelligence. 

Again, self-assessment is the first step in career planning, so take inventory of yourself. Assess your emotional intelligence, your people strengths, experiences, values, needs, skills and your own personality. No two people have the same emotional intelligence for work or for happiness. A satisfying career and a happy life must each be planned. So you must plan, each of you, not only to get a job in the career you choose but also to find peace and happiness. Your skills will get you a job with a corporation, but when the corporation closes or downsizes, will those skills be universal enough to be transferable? Will they enable you to change career directions and still be satisfied with your work. Those aspects of the previous position that satisfied you may actually relate to another, seemingly unrelated career in a way you were unaware of. So much depends upon the depth of your self-assessment, not just your self-awareness. For instance, teachers have business and management skills. But if they only see themselves as people working with students, they will not see real estate or insurance as possible careers. In reality, teachers make excellent real estate or insurance agents. Even though they may be only slightly familiar with computers, they can talk to people and sense whether they understand what they are talking about. Teachers can succeed in many industries because they can learn instructions quickly, teach them to others, and are tuned into how others are hearing things. Their teaching skills are easily transferred from the classroom to industry. 

Self-discovery involves an inventory that looks beyond the obvious, specialized skill, to the universal, associated skill. You may want to think of this skill as emotional intelligence. The inventory assumes a warehouse of experience after an internship or summer job. Hands-on skills are just as important as academic skills, especially in our service driven economy. So write down all your skills. If there are some that you need to strengthen, develop them in addition to your academic competencies. You cannot lock yourself into a career by developing only those skills required for a specific position. Note that these abilities and capabilities are transferable and that your inventory will reveal weaknesses as well as strengths. Look for pattern and similarities within your list. Or better, take the list to your career counselor. 

Setting career goals before you assess yourself may lead to unrealistic goals, unrealistic dreams, so begin your self-assessment as early as your freshman year. Your Career Center is a good place to start.

On campus, career development should begin at your Career Center. Use the network at your Career Center to research careers and to explore your options before you decide on a career. Know that the average professional may make 3-5 career changes in a lifetime. Most companies are now using a contingency work force: part-time employees and contract employees. Career Centers offer and interpret assessment tools in the form of tests such as the Strong Interest Inventory Test; Kuder Occu-pational Orientation Inventory; Camp-bell Interest and Skills Survey; and the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. Any one of these tests will help you explore what you know, who you are, what you want, and where you want to go. Your Career Center will help you select the test best for you. One of the best self-assessment publications is Richard Nelson Bolles' The 1997 What Color Is Your Parachute? The skills, interests and personality tests given by your Career Center and the publications available at all major bookstores will help you answer the following questions: 

• Are you motivated by a desire for achievement and accomplishment? 
• Are you motivated by a desire to be appreciated? 
• Do you value realism and common sense or value imagination and innovation? 
• Do you like to use and hone established skills or like to learn new skills? 
• Do you get bored easily after mastering skills? 
• Are you energized by being with other people? 
• Are you energized by spending time alone? 
• Do you prefer knowing what you are getting into or like adapting to new situations?

One of the newest aspects in career planning is networking with alumni. Alumni have academic experiences similar to yours and valuable professional advice. Career Centers are keeping databases on their alumni. One of the best things you can do in planning your career is to attach yourself to an alumna or an alumnus. Your Career Center can help you with such an attachment. In addition to having networking databases, your Career Center is a consulting agency for employers and a resource for information on the job market. It houses a multitude of resources to help you plan your career development.

A personality and career fit 

Now that you have a course, a plan of action, you need to determine what will lead you to a successful career. A career is here defined as progress or the general course of action of a person through life in some profession or some moral or intellectual action. Your self-discovery may have revealed weaknesses that you must work on continuously, but it will also reveal strengths that create an image of yourself. Feel good about these assets. Feel good that you are working on your skills. Don't get stuck on what contributes to self-acceptance, things such as why you chose particular goals, were you influenced by peers, family or economics? Find references that influenced you and make contact with them. Network. Employers will ask, Why are you the best candidate? Why do you qualify for this position? You must be ready to answer these questions with confidence, confidence based on knowledge of self. Look at all the dimensions in your life: assets, skills, habits, self esteem, spiritual growth, relationships, mental health, traveling experiences and your prosperity consciousness. Visit your college career center, discuss your career plans with counselors, professors, advisors, etc. The interaction with resources will help make your personal and professional goals clear. Accept responsibility for the results in your life, accept the responsibility for where you are, and if things aren't where you want them to be, change them, because you can. You have the power. The odds are in your favor. And be sure to write down your goals. Affirm that nothing is too good for you because you have the potential, the ability, and the opportunity to achieve whatever you set your mind to. 

Success and Commitment 

Achieving success at this point of self-awareness will require commitment, a commitment that equals the level of success you want to attain. Success is a level of contentment with achievement and satisfaction or the attainment of wealth or position. It is achieved at many stages during a lifetime, and as you achieve goals, you set more, at higher levels. Career success is based on your commitment to a dream and doing what is required to achieve it. 

Whatever career path you choose you must also work to improve yourself continuously. Your professional growth planning must be supported by monitoring employment trends through reading economic and political news in newspapers and magazines, by researching employers in industry journals, career centers and trade magazines for all possible job information resources. Take notes and make lists of potential employers. The best plans are meaningless unless they are supported by goals and tasks. Be specific in these goals. Being specific is your way to break old habits, as well as acquire new, positive ones. Sacrifice, give up something for the sake of something else. You may succeed in several dimensions of your life, but to do so you must grow and continuously challenge yourself to succeed in all of the dimensions in your life. In life, you don't get what you want; you get what you are. So you must continue to write down your goals, read, attend workshops and surround yourself with people who are growing and stretching. Network with people who are challenging themselves to do more and sacrifice being around those who aren't. You must create the environment in which you can grow. Be conscious of the music you listen to, the TV shows you watch and the books you read. Work on creating a healthy, positive environment. Don't blame anyone else for your short comings, but look at your life, where you are, and where you want to go. If you don't have a dream, get one.

Success will take you to a level of contentment; self-fulfillment will give you the power of greatness. Invest in yourself; make yourself important. Join professional organizations, follow through on job offers, be consistent with professional and personal growth. Acquire knowledge at each level of development. Learn what to do; learn what not to do. Learn skills, how to do it. And have a vision to be an active, positive force in your own life. Aim for something and live up to your potential. 

Always know that you can do more if you act on your ideas. Think of the professional and personal development process as your regular point of resolution (don't wait for New Year's Day). Achieving fulfillment will take practice and patience, but do whatever it takes to pursue career greatness. Do what you decide to do with love, class and dignity.  Fulfillment comes with doing what you love; greatness follows fulfillment. 
Explore the Internet, THE BLACK COLLEGIAN ONLINE and MINORITIES' JOB BANK, for example, for new career opportunities, new career information and new assessment tools. Attend workshops; join career related mailing lists; join college networks; attend career fairs for information; network; keep a note notebook of employers, contacts and job leads; develop interview skills and computer skills; gain career related experience through internships, volunteering and part time jobs. Sharpen your communication skill. Travel. 

Set challenging goals for career advancement as determined by your own individual and customized agenda. Not everyone achieves fulfillment in his or her career goal. There are reasons why certain people flourish in certain positions and why other people find career greatness. You should have an awareness of your professional and personal development potential i.e. assessment, acceptance, commitment. If you believe strongly in something, if it is really right for you, or if you feel you were meant to do it, then you will find the inner resources to make it happen. Work can be exciting, fulfilling, rewarding and fun. It can be what you need and want it to be, and you can even get paid doing it. There are at least a dozen careers out there, each with your name on it, careers that will reward you for using your natural gifts and let you do what you enjoy most and do best. 

Gail Williams is Career Advisor at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Administering: 

A department of people, programs 
A specific activity 

Analyzing and Classifying: 

Quantitative, statistical, a physical and/or scientific data human/social situations 
Classifying information into categories or people into programs 

Anticipating: 

Seeking underlying causes for a problem 
Finding information in obscure, remote, or varied sources 
Finding potentially helpful people 
Staying one step ahead of public moods 
Ability to sense what will be fashionable in consumer goods 
Expecting a problem before it develops, seeing the first signs 

Evaluating/Appraising/Comparing: 

Evaluating the performance of individuals 
Evaluating programs or services in terms of objectives 
Judging the similarity or divergence of data, people or things from obvious standards 

Handling Complaints: 

From customers, stockholders, citizens, clients 

Initiating: 

New ideas, approaches, ways of doing things; new projects 
Contacts with people, strangers 

Interviewing/Questioning: 

Evaluating applicants to an organization 
Obtaining information from others 
Obtaining evidence in legal situations 
Asking creative questions in fluid situations 

Investigating/Finding: 

Seeking hard-to-find or withheld information 
Seeking underlying causes for a problem 
Finding information in obscure, remote, or varied sources 
Locating potentially helpful people 

Collaborating/Teamwork: 

Attaining objectives through group processes 

Conceptualizing/Abstracting: 

Parts of a system into whole ideas from surface events 
New spatial relationships 
Non-observable physical phenomena 
Concepts, interpretations 

Coordinating 

Numerous events involving different people, great quantities of information 
Activities in different physical locations 
Events in time sequence 

Counseling/Advising/Group Facilitating: 

Helping or advising people individually, in groups, in various 
Organizations with personal/emotional concerns, life 
Development concerns (career, finances, education), and/or family matters 

Creating: 

Artistically (visual arts, performing arts, crafts, music, writing) 
New ideas for an organization 
New ways of solving technical problems 
Dealing with pressure when risking self or others 
Time pressure, deadlines complaints, 
Abuse from others 

Dealing with Unknowns: 

Making decisions on the basis of severely limited information 
Making hypotheses about virtually unknown phenomena 

Decision Making: 

About the use of money 
About alternative courses of action 
Involving physical safety of others 

Delegating: 

Distributing tasks to others; giving responsibility to others 

Displaying: 

Ideas artistically 

*This list is based on Margaret Newhouse's Outside the Ivory Tower, A Guide for Academics Considering Alternative Careers (Office of Career services, Harvard)