Unsure of Your Career Path?

What Do You Like?  What Don’t You Like? What are You Good At? & How Do You React to Certain Situations?  Becoming more aware of these topics can help you determine which occupations and work situations could be a better fit for you—because if you don’t like something you probably won’t be good at it!  

The self-assessment tools provided below are self-directed, meaning it is designed so you can use it and review your results without a licensed or trained professional interpreting the data. Even though it is not required you visit a career advisor to read and understand the results, you may have questions.  If that is the case, please take a moment and make a confidential appointment with a UC San Diego Career Services Center advisor dedicated to the needs of Ph.D. and master’s students.

Resources

Self-Assessment Tools

Focus is a self-paced, online career and education planning tool for use by college students. It enables you to self-assess your career relevant personal qualities and explore career fields and major areas of study that are most compatible with your assessment results.

TypeFocus: Discover your personality type and what careers fit your natural strengths. This tool assesses your personality type and automatically incorporates it into three personalized reports. These reports offer insight into self-awareness that promotes wise decisions about important topics including: What career choices fit with my personality? How can I improve my chances for getting a job? How can I get along with people better? What are my learning style strengths? We encourage you to make an appointment with a career counselor to review your results.

Login to your Port Triton Account to utilize Focus and TypeFocus free of charge and to view the powerful Vault Online Career Library, which provides information on companies, careers, and industries, in addition to expert advice, newsletters, salary data, and career discussion boards.

Make Career Contacts and Getting Connected Professionally

Making connections within a profession is widely known to be the most effective way to find a job. While this is especially the case for job markets beyond academe, where the search process can be less systematic and formal, getting connected within the academic profession is still useful in securing a position.

Occupational Information

Occupational Outlook Handbook, provide by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, gives you jobs and industry forecasts, salary and cost-of-living statistics by geographic locations, economic outlook reports, career guides, plus much more.

Road Trip Nation: (Define Your Road in Life!).  Watch videos of some of the most distinguished scientists, entrepreneurs and government officials today (many with advanced degrees) that followed their heart and dreams (and loved what they were doing) to accomplish “success” beyond what they could have ever imagined.
Related Articles

Should You Finish? The Chronicle of Higher Education (2005)

A Ph.D. and a Failure? Beyond the Ivory Tower, The Chronicle of Higher Education (2005)

"Thinking Beyond the Dissertation" Chronicle of Higher Education (2005)

“Who Are You?” Inside Higher Ed (2005)
Recomended Reading

A Ph.D. is Not Enough!: A Guide to Survival in Science,
Peter J. Feibelman (Addison-Wesley, 1994)

What Color Is Your Parachute? 2008: A Practical Manual for Job-hunters and Career-Changers, Richard Nelson (BollesTen Speed Press; 2008 & Revised, edition, October 2007)

The Pathfinder: How to Choose or Change Your Career for a Lifetime of Satisfaction and Success, Nicholas Lore (Fireside, 1998)

Finding The Open Road: A Guide to Self-Construction Rather Than Mass Production (Roadtrip Nation), Mike Marriner, Brian McAllister, Nathan Gebhard (Ten Speed Press (April 15, 2005)