The CVS Self-Assessment Process
The CVS Self-Assessment Process looks at key elements that make up your self/career identity profile and that relate to your career success and satisfaction including:
- Your general career-related interest patterns, themes, occupational preferences, and work-related values
- Your skills, competencies, and abilities
- Your work-related personality/style characteristics, traits and needs
- Your core work-related strengths and development needs (weaknesses)
After completing the CVS, you will hopefully come away with a greater awareness of your personal assets/resources (strengths), your development needs (weaknesses), and a list of possible career directions to explore, all of which can help you make more informed career-related decisions and choices.
The Holland Typology and the CVS Self-Assessment Process…
Skills Identification
The CVS Self-Assessment places a heavy emphasis on the skills identification process thought by many authorities to be the centerpiece of the career planning process. Your ability to identify, analyze, understand, and articulate your motivated skills is critical to your effective career management.
The purpose of the CVS skills assessment process is to help you become more aware of the skills that you currently possess, and that you enjoy using, as well as the skills you show a potential to develop. It also includes the skills that you would like to develop further. The skills involved are skills needed in the present job market.
Personality Assessment
Another major feature of the CVS Self-Assessment Process is the emphasis it places on personality assessment. In many career assessment instruments, personality is often an overlooked factor or is not addressed in any real depth. Understanding one’s personality/style characteristics and traits, is critical in helping to achieve career success and satisfaction.
Each Career Vector scale contains a section on personality which describes important aspects of one’s work related personality characteristics, traits, motivational factors, values, needs, and preferred style of functioning as revealed in your Career Vector preferences.
Your Core Self/Career Identity Profile
Each of us is unique and the essence of our uniqueness is captured by the useful concept of core self/career identity. Your core self/career identity profile is made up of the results of the CVS assessment process and includes a combination of four broad components that define who you are in relationship to your work/career.
These includes your skills (areas of effectiveness,) your personality/style characteristics and traits, what motivates you (your interests, needs, and work values,) and your development needs (weaknesses.) These are portrayed in the following chart below.
The four elements are not independent of each other. Each component interacts with the others to form the unique configuration of who you are in career-related terms.
| Personality/Style Characteristics & Traits | Knowledge/Skills/Abilities |
|---|---|
| Work-Related Personality/Style Characteristics and TraitsBehavioral Patterns/TendenciesThe Way You Relate to People and Deal With Stress and Pressure |
Current Motivated Skills/Areas of Effectiveness Functional (transferable) Skills “I can” Knowledge-based (work content) Skills “I know” Adaptive Traits/self-management Skills “I am” |
| Development Needs | Motivational Factors |
|---|---|
| Skill DeficitsSkill Areas Reflecting a Potential for DevelopmentWork-Related Personality/Style Characteristics & Traits in Need of Development and/or Management | Primary Career Themes (Vectors) General Career Interests and Occupational Preferences Work-related Values Preferred Work Roles and Work Environments Needs and Motivators |
Hopefully, this assessment data will provide a framework for you to formulate and develop a clearer picture of yourself in relation to your primary career-related characteristics and strengths and development needs.
The assessment information provided by the CVS can help you to better define your vocational identity, gain a clearer sense of who you are in work/career related terms, and help you make more informed and effective career decisions.