🧭 Career Clarity Package: A Roadmap for Discovering Your Ideal Career Path

🎯 Goal:

A guide in understanding your values, interests, strengths, personality, and life goals, and to align these with viable and fulfilling career options.

🔍 Step 1: Self-Discovery & Self-Awareness

1. Values Clarification

Understanding values helps one identify what truly matters in a career (autonomy, creativity, stability, purpose, etc.).

• Recommended Tool: Life Values Inventory

  • https://www.lifevaluesinventory.org/

  • Cost: Free

  • Evidence-based and simple to interpret.
    
    

2. Interests Assessment

Interests predict job satisfaction and engagement.

• Recommended Tool: ONET Interest Profiler (based on Holland Codes)

  • https://www.mynextmove.org/explore/ip

  • Cost: Free

  • Publicly funded and widely used by career professionals.
    
    

• Optional deeper tool: Strong Interest Inventory®

  • Cost: ~$25–50 depending on provider (requires interpretation by a certified professional)

  • Highly validated.
    
    

3. Personality Assessment

To understand work style, environment fit, and interpersonal strengths.

• Recommended Tool: MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®) or equivalent
  
  Alternatives:

  • 16 Personalities (based on MBTI) – https://www.16personalities.com/

    • Cost: Free (basic); ~$29 for full report
      
      

  • Truity Personality Tests – https://www.truity.com/

    • Cost: Free with optional $19–$29 premium reports
      
      

  • Big Five Personality Test – https://www.truity.com/test/big-five-personality-test

    • Cost: Free (basic); $19 full report

    • Considered more scientifically robust than MBTI
      
      

4. Skills & Strengths Inventory

To identify transferable skills and natural aptitudes.

• Recommended Tools:
  
  

  • CliftonStrengths® (formerly StrengthsFinder) – https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/home.aspx

    • Cost: $24.99 (Top 5); $59.99 (Full 34 strengths)
      
      

  • VIA Character Strengths Survey – https://www.viacharacter.org/

    • Cost: Free for basic; $20–$50 for detailed reports
      
      

🧠 Step 2: Reflection & Integration

After completing the assessments:

• Look for patterns: recurring themes in interests, values, and strengths.
  
  

• Identify non-negotiables: lifestyle needs, work-life balance, salary, etc.
  
  

• Create a "Career Vision Board" (can be literal or a worksheet) showing ideal job elements: day-to-day activities, work environment, people (and the kinds of people) you’d like to work with, industries of interest.
  
  

🔎 Step 3: Explore Career Options

1. Career Matching Tools

• O*NET Online:
  https://www.onetonline.org/

  • Matches interests and skills to real-world job data.
    
    

• MyNextMove:
  https://www.mynextmove.org/

  • Designed for easy use; links to O*NET.
    
    

• CareerExplorer by Sokanu:
  https://www.careerexplorer.com/

  • Cost: Free basic; $35 for premium
    
    

2. Narrative Coaching Exercise (optional)

Write your “career story” so far—what led to now—and where you want the story to go next. Then we will work backward to figure out what roles fit your story.

📚 Step 4: Recommended Readings & Resources

1. “Designing Your Life” by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans

   • Excellent for ideation and building a career by design.
     
     

2. “What Color Is Your Parachute?” by Richard N. Bolles

   • Classic career design workbook.
     
     

3. “Pivot” by Jenny Blake

   • Perfect for mid-career changers.
     
     

4. “Refuse to Choose!” by Barbara Sher

   • Ideal for multi-passionate clients.
     
     

5. Podcasts:

   • Happen To Your Career

   • The Career Change Maker Podcast

   • The Muse Daily
     
     

🛠️ Step 5: Create an Action Plan

This can be done through coaching with me or independently. Include:

• Top 3 career paths to explore deeper

• Short-term and long-term goals

• Informational interviews with people in those careers

• Reskilling plans (if needed)

• Timeline for decision-making and testing options (e.g., freelancing, job shadowing)

🧩 Bonus Tools

• Wheel of Life (Career Edition)

• Ikigai Worksheet (Free templates available online)

• Career Anchors Assessment (Edgar Schein) – May require purchase (~$20)