Harnessing Self Awareness

BY GENEVIEVE BENSON

As an individual, self-awareness both personally and professionally is crucial to understanding your identity, strengths and areas of growth. Through reflection and assessment, students can evaluate their skills and articulate them effectively in informational interviews and networking contexts, as well as during formal interviews during the jobseeking process.

Exploring positive professional traits through UMN tools is helpful as tailored resources are abundant for students within every major. Each college provides assessments to lead students through career exploration and readiness, and offers effective language to use when expressing your background, talents and experiences to a prospective employer. The College of Liberal Arts offers the Core Career Competencies to prompt students to examine the areas they have developed throughout their academic career. Additionally, the RATE (reflect, articulate, translate and evaluate) tool guides students when reviewing past job, internship, volunteer and course experiences towards relevant language and terminology. Other forms of assessment can be found in first-year and transfer student introductory courses, which each college offers in its own capacity.

As a college student, the first step is being aware of your overarching objectives and career goals, even if they're not set in stone. Exploration and self-reflection ask the question, what personal and professional opportuni-ties are out there in relation to my interests, goals and passions? After identifying this information, the career world is your oyster!