Teachers in Transition - Episode 99 - Assess Your Strengths and Weaknesses When Thinking About Changing Jobs

I'm a career transition and job search coach. And I specialize in helping burn out teachers. Just like you deal, not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day-to-day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for teachers in transition. In some episodes, I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day to day basis. In other episodes, I'll be talking about career transition.

What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track. These are questions that you need answers to, and I can help you find those answers. My name is kitty . Boitnott welcome to teachers and transition.

career transition and job search coach specializing in working with teachers who are experiencing job burnout and are ready to make the leap from the classroom into another line of work. And then on alternating weeks, I speak to stress management and stress management strategies because I'm also a trained and certified stress management coach. This week, the topic is career transition, and I'm excited to share with you that I have just become an affiliate with a company that offers , uh ,

a career assessment that I think can be useful for my clients. And I wanted to share it with you as a listener today, in case you might be interested in checking it out, I'll include the link in the show notes, but it's called career fitter.com. Uh , I think it's been around for awhile , but I only became aware of it.

And the inside of the last weeks I was approached by one of the sales directors and asked if I would take a look and consider whether it would be useful as a tool for some of my clients. And so I took a look, I would never recommend anything to a client that I haven't tried myself. So I took a look. I took the quiz, you can take a free version of it.

And then once you've looked at the free report, you also have the option of upgrading and receiving a more comprehensive report for $19 and 95 cents, which according to the website is a $39 and 95 cent value. So I went ahead 20 bucks. What the heck? I went ahead and signed up for the upgraded report and received it.

And I have to say I was mildly surprised maybe, and, and tickled that it was as comprehensive a report as it turned out to be for only 20 bucks, because I do offer another assessment, a paid assessment now in the program that I promote. And, and when I'm helping clients who are in the middle of their own career transition and job search, I offer a menu of assessments. Most of them are free. Um, then there's the Myers-Briggs, which you can take at the online version for about 50 bucks.

And then I offer another , um , higher paid premium assessment. Uh, that's called the pathway planner, but I don't often recommend that people invest in the pathway planner right off the bat because invariably one of the careers that comes back and usually the top career that comes back as a recommended career for the taker of the assessment is teacher and, you know, duh that's choice you're trying to get away from.

So I don't recommend the pathway planner right off the bat, partly because it's expensive. And partly because the general rule of thumb is that almost everybody gets back, that they would be a great teacher. Then, then there are these other recommendations to go along with teacher.

The career fitter assessment is a little bit different and its approach is to take what would otherwise be similar to the Myers-Briggs assessment and frame the responses, frame the report in terms of your work behavior, not just your general behavior in life, but specifically as it relates to your work and how you get along with others or don't, or how you prefer to interact with others, what your primary work personality is.

And so when I took the quiz and paid for the report I got about it's, I didn't count out the pages, but it's about a 14 page report that in my case, and I don't know what anybody else's responses would look like, but in my case, I felt like it was pretty spot on, frankly. Um, they say that my career personality is analyst, but the analyst isn't what you would think it would be because it certainly doesn't have anything to do with analysis in the way you would think of analysis.

Um, it says that as a quick description of myself as an analyst, my quest would be harmonious relationships, which is absolutely true. My style is synergy and my strength is diplomacy. Now, all I can say about that is that I have been told by multiple people over the course of my life, that I have a unique way of phrasing criticism and feedback in a way that doesn't hurt people's feelings, that is in fact helpful and not hurtful.

And in fact, when I was in , in high school, I remember telling a girlfriend that I hadn't discovered my talent yet. My sister could draw. She was she's still to this day, an excellent artist . She can take any picture and draw it without any problem on barely can make a stick person. My brother is a prolific artist and he's, he's also a musically talented. Did he put, he plays multiple, multiple instruments.

I can barely plunk along on the piano, even though I took 10 years of lessons , uh, he's also a painter and an artist. He's a poet he's written these own lyrics for, for music. He's, he's just terrifically talented. And so I'm telling my high school friend, I don't have a talent or I haven't identified my talent compared to my brother and my sister. And I won't ever forget the look of shock on her face as she, like , she couldn't believe she was hearing what I was saying.

And she said, kitty, don't, you know, that your talent is being able to say the right thing at the right time. I hadn't even thought about that being a talent, but I think that would be what you would call diplomacy. So I think that was pretty accurate. Then they also offer a chart, a bar chart to offer , uh , distinctions between , uh , personality types, reserved versus outgoing, which goes back to the Myers-Briggs introverted versus extroverted. I'm extremely introverted.

Uh , if you believe the Myers-Briggs profile, which I think is pretty accurate for me, a theoretical versus realistic sentimental versus analytical structured versus flexible. And then they, they talk about the , they offer the bar chart, but then they also offer a bulleted list of what each of those things mean and how they can affect you in your work, the type of work that you are engaged in and would enjoy being engaged in.

Um, and then they talk about, there's a section on potential weaknesses, best personality details , top business points, communication method , uh, preferred business , uh , ideal business environment, team building , approach management practice, and then a list of best career choices and what I , what I like about that, and what is similar to this assessment , uh , to the other assessment, the pathway planner assessment that I offer, which is more expensive is that both are then connected to O

net online.org, which is the warehouse, the occupational handbook warehouse that the United States department of labor oversees and maintains. Now, if you ever go to O net online.org, it's spell it out exactly the way it sounds. O N E T O N L I N e.org. You will find hundreds, thousands perhaps of occupations listed that are , um, cover any, any kind of work you can imagine. And it in each occupation has sort of a , uh , profile that with it.

What kind of education and training do you need to qualify for that particular occupation? What's the general outlook, the projected outlook for that occupation? You know , there's some occupations that have disappeared over the last 20, 30 years. You wouldn't, you wouldn't want to be switching to a career at this point that has a poor outlook.

So you want to be thinking in terms of the long range outlook for particular job or career , um, they also talk about the median salary and all of this is based on your location. You would pick the state that you were in and all of the information is based on where you live.

So the recommendations, as far as the type of work that I might be interested in, some of them landed pretty, pretty, fairly, and then others not so sure about, but there are lots of them, lots to choose from and lots to take a look at. Um, and then finally they close with occupational factors and famous people who have the same work personality that I do all of that for $19 and 95 cents.

Now I'll offer the link in the show notes in the event that you're thinking, yeah, you know, I'd like those kinds of assessments in 20 bucks, it's not gonna break the piggy bank and you don't even have to pay for the upgraded report. If you just want to do the free version, that's fine too, but I'm going to offer that as a link for you.

And I'll also offer a link to the pathway planner brochure in the event that you might be interested in that one, even though it's more expensive, the biggest difference between the pathway planner and the career fitter assessment, is it the pathway planner also assesses your cognitive abilities? Um, there's a math portion and there's a verbal portion.

I tell people when they're about to take this particular assessment to expect across the questions to be across between the Myers-Briggs assessment and SATs that we all took in high school, because there are going to be some math problems that you may or may not be able to solve that will throw you back into your, your juniors or senior year of high school, depending on when you took the sat. And then there are , um, there's also a verbal section.

And then the report, there's a 16 page report that you get with that particular assessment, along with hot links to specific careers that you would be well-suited for based on the results of your assessment. Now, as I said, there are other assessments that you can take and there are plenty of them out there, lots of them for free, some of them are paid and the whole, and I don't recommend that you put all of your faith in one particular assessment, because none of them are full-proof.

None of them are completely 100% accurate about every single person, because even the Myers-Briggs can change over time or change depending on the day that you took it and how you felt when you took it. Um, because the idea is that you answer the questions immediately without overthinking them and know things from day to day can change the way you might think about a particular question on Myers-Briggs.

The thing is that these assessments ask the same question in enough different ways that they're able to get a sense of who you are and how you respond to that particular question or situation. The purpose of these assessments is to help you to get in touch with yourself, to help you to assess your strengths, your weaknesses, your preferences, the kind of, and to spark ideas about the kind of work you might be interested in doing in your next career.

So that's the purpose of doing any of these assessments is to help spark your thinking about what kind of career might be a good fit for you at this stage in your life, for your personality preferences, for your learning styles, for your work personality , um, what kind of work would you find fulfilling at this stage in your career? Assuming that you're no longer feeling fulfilled and happy about your teaching career. And that would be the main reason.

I would think that anybody who's listening to this podcast or watching this YouTube channel would even be listening to me. And that is you're not currently happy and you're looking for alternatives and you're trying to find answers to what it is that you can do next in your career. As always, I'm happy to help if I can.

I offer a 20 to 30 minute discovery session for anyone who would like to talk about how I can help as you look for and consider the various options that you might have in your post teaching career to make an appointment for that discovery session. It doesn't cost a cent. It's a 20 to 30 minutes minutes session. Um, you can go to teachers in transition.com forward slash calendar to sign up and I'll put the link in the show notes today. So that's it.

If you're interested in career fit or.com , take a look. If you're interested in pathway plan or take a look at the brochure that I will include in the notes. And if you'd like to talk about your future options, make an appointment and let's chat, that's it for today. That's it for this week, have a wonderful, wonderful week. Please continue to stay well and stay safe. And I'll see you next week.

If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. I'm Katie Boitnott and this is teachers in transition.