By Todd Blackmon/reporter
Students confused about what to study in college received help understanding how to pursue a major or a specific career path based on their personality and individual strengths.
NW student development coordinator Taylor Jensen, who works with career services, showed students how to use personality strengths to their advantage to figure out what interests them.
“We wanted the opportunity for students to come into our offices and learn about themselves,” Jensen said
Jensen showed students tools they can access through the TCC MyPlan website, tccd-nw.myplan.com.
She said career services works with students by helping them identify their personality traits using psychologist Carl Jung’s type dynamics. This helps individuals better understand their behavior and how they interact with the world by breaking different aspects of their personalities into four-letter acronyms. For example, INTP means a person has an introverted, intuitive, thinking, perceiving personality.
By identifying a student’s personality, career services can begin fitting students into career clusters.
“This is psychology. This is science,” Jensen said. “There is a reason you fit into one of these clusters.”
The next process involves breaking the students’ type dynamic letters into pairs. Taylor explained that the pairs of letters are analyzed to show the students how they tend to communicate.
Career services then uses what Jensen called a job jar, where students pick a job that fits within their criteria and explain why they would or would not like that job.
Students also take an interests assessment to help them explore possible passions they never knew they had or look deeper into the jobs they think they want.
“Some students come in here lost,” Jensen said. “Some students just take the assessment to feel justified that they are moving in the right direction.”
Once the interests are identified, students are asked about what skills they possess. Finally, the last step is exploring the work values the student may have.
Taylor said some students are more interested in being more independent in the workplace while others may value support or hold personal achievement above work relationships. Once all this is put together, career services provides the student with the resources necessary to find out which schools offer the degree plan they want.
“[MyPlan] can’t tell you exactly what you want to do, and that’s a good thing,” Jensen said. “Part of the adventure is discovering what’s right for you, but MyPlan is a good place to start.”
