faculty of economics and business
career office
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"There are three Things extremely hard, Steel, a Diamond, and to know one's self."
Benjamin Franklin, 1750
Career Office
Careeroffice.feb@rug.nl
@careerFEBRUG

faculty of economics and business career office
You want to find a job or an internship and you don’t realy know where to start?
Why not start by looking at yourself? This self-assement can help you to get a handle on the you
- it’s your future after all.
Fully understanding what you are looking for and what you can offer will enable you to take the next step - exploring the options that are available to you. It will also give you a yardstick against which to assess those options, and, incidentally, you will find that knowing yourself will prove invaluable when you apply for jobs later on, saving you lots of time in otherwise wasted applications. Any sensible decision about your future will take the many facets of your life into account; you can approach them in any order and in whatever way feels right to you. Bear in mind that you cannot necessarily expect to find a job which matches all of these ingredients perfectly; you may find yourself looking for work which allows you enough time to satisfy some of your needs outside work, in your leisure time.
We hope it will encourage you to think more about your career choice and to use the other sources of careers advice and information available at the Careers Office.
Kind regards,
Elise Kamphuis & Lykke Hendriks
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faculty of economics and business career office
Before you start the self-assement bare in mind that there are many ways to approach the subject of you; there is no single best approach we can recommend. Your ideas will come from different sources, but good places to start could be:
 talking to people you know well who you feel will be honest with you
 exercises and questionnaires designed to help you to identify your motivations, preferences, strengths and interests.
 visualising yourself in an “ideal” job.
 quiet time thinking about yourself
 a discussion with a Study Adviser
 read a career guide
We would like to stress how valuable talking to people can be. Friends and family can be great sources of help – so, too, can people in jobs you may be interested in. But they are not always dispassionate or objective. You may therefore find it useful also to talk with a Study Adviser. He or she will not tell you what you want or don’t want, but might be able to articulate your ideas and help you to move forwards.
In this assesment you will think about four aspects:
1.
Motivation
2.
personal preferences
3.
Skills and abilities
4.
Interests and knowledge
These four aspects will then be translated into four subjects:
1.
Gift
2.
Discipline
3.
Ambition
4.
Possibilitie
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The inner forces which determine what you want and need from your working life and give you not only direction but also the energy you need to pursue your goals. For example, some people are motivated primarily by the need to help other people, whereas others might be more motivated by a desire for wealth or status.
Think about the following questions:
 what do you enjoy doing?
 what do you want out of a job?
 what do you want out of life as a whole?
 what do you want to avoid?
Understanding these will help you to understand the kind of work you will enjoy and the environment and culture in which you are likely to feel comfortable and fulfilled. Some people, for example, might prefer a very team-based environment, where issues are talked through, whereas others may prefer more autonomy.
Personal Needs and Pressures
Criteria Important? yes/no
Why and in what way?
How important is it for me to travel around the country or internationally for my job?
How important is the location of my employer to me – e.g. city, small town, rural community.
How important is the size or organisation to me?
How important is it that I work for an international organisation?
How important is the salary package to me?
How important are environmental issues when considering my future employer?
How important is balance of life to me?
How important is a professional qualification or further qualifications?
How important is it for me to study for further exams?
How important is an organisation’s career development programme to me?
How important is training to me?
How important is early responsibility to me?
How important is it to have predictability in my work?
How important is the company’s policy on equal opportunities?

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How important is it to be involved with helping people individually or in groups?
You may already have thought about how you see yourself in the future. If so, write down what you would like to be able to say about yourself in relation to your career three years after starting your job.
Consider how these aspirations match with other aspects of your life such as your personal relationships, sporting commitments and so on. e.g. will I be able to continue playing county squash if I am expected to work on Saturdays?
Are you under pressure from anyone to move in a particular career direction? Consider the following potential influencers of your decision and think about how they are affecting you and how you feel about this. E.g. Parents, other family, tutor, friends, careers advisers, etc.
Name influencer e.g Father
Nature influence
Wants you to gain a professional qualification to ensure you future career security.
How you feel about it
Feel you may have had enough of studying, perhaps consider further qualifications later on.
You may wish to revisit some of the earlier sections to reflect on whether they are your views or someone else’s before moving forward to the final section.
These you will have developed through your academic studies, your social and extra-curricular activities and any work experience you may have gained. Do concentrate, however, on the ones you actually want to use, bearing in mind that you have the power not only to identify existing skills, but also to improve them and to acquire new ones.
What have I learned from my academic experience?
As a student you will have gained knowledge and developed certain abilities. These may include learned skills such as using a word processing package as well as more natural aptitudes, such as clear verbal communication. Some of these abilities will have been developed through your academic studies, others informally.
1. Write, below a list of all the educational activities you have undertaken.
2. Against each activity, make a list of the abilities and skills you have developed through undertaking each one.
Here are some typical skills you may have developed: communicating verbally and in writing, teaching/coaching, presenting, leading, planning, team working, organising, analysing data, selling/negotiating, creating thinking, evaluating information, etc.
Activity
E.g. participating in the management game
Abilities/Skills developed
E.g. developed strategic acting skills, team cooperation, manage organisational processes, negotiating techniques

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Which activities do you consider to be most and least satisfying? Why do you think this might be?
Now consider the extent to which you wish to use your degree subject in the future. Partly
(Using the statistics from my Geography degree). Vocationally – (I am thinking of teaching). In an academic sense (I am considering a PhD).
You may have had a vacation job, undertaken part-time work, had an extended period of work, directorship, traveling abroad or just visited an employer. Whatever the experience you will have learned something about your personal preferences, skills and abilities.
List below all of the jobs which you have experienced and the skills you have developed from them. Then consider what it is that you liked or disliked about each experience.
Work experience Skills developed e.g. worked as a Oral communication, receptionist coping under pressure
Liked/disliked
Liked dealing with public, disliked the constant time pressure
Activities in and out of College
What have I learned from my activities in and out of College?
The way in which you spend your free time, both at and away from college, can reflect what is important to you. It can also tell you something about your personality. List below the activities which you enjoy, you might also like to think back to any activities in which you were involved before you went to college; include everyday activities such as organising your personal finances or supporting friends through their problems.
Then note down your reasons for (not)enjoying it.. See if a trend emerges as to why you enjoy these activities – e.g. are they indoor or outdoor, active or passive, solitary or group activities?
Note any trends.
Activities Why do I (not)enyo this activity? e.g. volunteering Chance to give something back to the community
Your choices will be affected if you want to apply specific knowledge you have gained or satisfy particular interests in your work, and you may have to decide whether these can be incorporated directly or indirectly or, indeed, have to be satisfied elsewhere.

faculty of economics and business career office
Can you use your knowledge for some kind of job? Or is this not possible how can you than use it? What could you use for a job?
Are your interests such that you can combine with your job? Or do you need to do that in your private time? If so how much time does your interest take? Think about what you would be willing to give up for a job and what not.
After having thought about who you are we advise you making a sort but practical writing about you.
Make four small cards
 Gift: write your skills and abbilities and knowledge down
 Discipline: where and how dit you obtain your gifts
 Ambition: write down your motivations, interests
 Possibilitie: write down your personal preferences after compairing them with your motivations, skills and abbilities and interests and knowledge.
By now you should be able to consider career choices based on your gift, discipline, ambition and possibilities. At the same time you will have gathered together information which will be useful when you start to complete employers’ application forms and go to interviews.
When you have found a internship/vacancy with an employer to whom you wish to apply, you should return to the cards you have made to compare yourself to the requirements of the company. Consider, from the information that you have about the job and the employer, whether there is a good match. This will help you make your career decisions.
You are now ready to move on to the next stage of career thinking finding a job/internship. You will find more information about this in the Finding a job/internship: where to start document posted on the website.
Still unsure where to go from here? Then talk to Careers Office staff for further assistance.
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Resources:
Oxford University Careers Service
Frisse Blikken: Workshop, Generatie Y faculty of economics and business career office
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