Personal Discovery

As you consider your time at HKS and the next steps in your professional journey, it’s a good idea to clarify for yourself the reasons you chose to come to HKS. Having clarity of your purpose and goals will help you make important choices about how you spend your time here. It will also help you make the most of career-related activities you choose to take part in, including those sponsored by OCA. We encourage you to go though a self-assessment process to gather information about yourself in order to make informed career decisions.

No one book, or assessment instrument, or exercise is best or right for everyone. However, here are a few resources for you to consider:

HKS Center for Public Leadership (CPL) Workshops

CPL will run a series of personal discovery extra-curricular workshops during the year. Their goal will be to help you gain insights into your specific leadership behaviors, style preferences and favored behaviors/activities. This information is extremely valuable both in terms of your personal development and career planning. CPL will announce these sessions.

Career/Self Assessment Instruments

There are many career-assessment tools available online – some free, some fee-based, some which you can interpret for yourself and some which require the assistance of a certified professional for interpretation. For an introduction to a range of self-assessment tools that are widely respected, the Riley Guide presents a range of self-directed, free and fee-based instruments for personality, interests, and skill assessment.

Also recommended are:

• Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) measures personality preferences on four different scales: Extraversion (E) – Introversion (I), Sensing (S) – Intuition (N), Thinking (T) – Feeling (F), and Judging (J) – Perceiving (P). Several OCA coaches are certified to interpret the MBTI.
• Strengths Finder 
• 360°Reach This tool will help you shape your career focus by giving you a sense of how you are perceived by your peers and colleagues.

Libraries and book stores are full of texts on self- and career-assessment. See your Career Guide binder for a list of some examples. A few we recommend include:

• Wishcraft: How to Get What You Really Want (Barbara Sher)
• I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was (Barbara Sher)
  Available for purchase in OCA office:
• Working Identity (Herminia Ibarra)
• In Transition (Mary Lindley Burton and Richard A. Wedemeyer)

Links to external websites are provided for informational purposes only and do not represent endorsement by the John F. Kennedy School of Government.