Explore Your Interests
The first step to choosing a major or career field is learning about yourself. Making a career choice that is in tune with your skills, interests and values can set you on the road to success.
Meet with a Career Counselor
Start with a one-on-one meeting to discuss career-related decisions. A career counselor can assist you with:
- Choosing a Major and Supporting Minor
- Finding a Co-op/Internship
- Mentor Program
- Networking Strategies
Call 618-650-3708 to Schedule an appointment
Assessments
The Career Development Center offers several assessments to assist you in identifying career options. Exploration into your personality, interests, skills and work values can identify careers you may not have considered. Students can combine the results of multiple assessments to achieve more refined results. Students can review their answers and retake any assessment as often as they like.
Online Assessments
Strong Interest Inventory (SII)
Completed online
This assessment identifies your level of interest across six general occupational themes. In addition to providing possible career options, the assessment also identifies possible academic majors for your consideration.
TruTalent
Completed online
A personality assessment, TruTalent identifies multiple dimensions of personality including: introversion, extraversion, sensing, intuition, thinking, feeling, judging and perception. The information provided helps students increase self-understanding and enhances personal development by identifying individual’s natural preferences, gifts and talents. A unique format describes various college scenarios and asks students to choose the scenario they identify with the most, as opposed to working with word pairs. TruTalent connects students to careers matching their personality types and interests.
CareerExplorer
Completed online
CareerExplorer is a 30-minute career assessment that measures over 140 of your traits to over 800 careers. The career compatibility reports let you look beyond how much you match with careers into why you match (or do not match) with a catalog of more than 800 careers. The personality report is intended to help you better understand how your unique combination of personality traits affects your strengths, weaknesses, values, and team interaction in the work place.
Looking for more assessments? We recommend:
Myers-Briggs type Indicator (MBTI)
Completed in the CDC
The MBTI is an assessment designed to identify personality preferences and match them to related career fields. This is an excellent tool for self-exploration. The MBTI is often given to students wanting exposure to a wide variety of potential careers.
Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (CISS)
Completed in the CDC
The CISS assists you in identifying your interests and skills pertaining to the world of work. The CISS successfully integrates these qualities into a comparison of needed interest and skill levels for specific occupations. This instrument can help you compare careers to activities you enjoy.
Self-Directed Search (SDS)
Self-administered
The SDS is a self-administered, self-scored and self-interpreted tool. The underlying theory is that people, occupations and environments can be classified into six categories. People who choose careers that match their own types are most likely to be both satisfied and successful. Your report can help you to understand more about how your skills and interests are related to your career choice.
Some of our assessments require a nominal fee. Please review the fee schedule.
Contact the Career Development Center at 618-650-3708 for more information about any of these assessments.