Month: May 2020

What am I good at?

I excel at organization and am always on top of things. I like to keep track of tasks with to-do lists and sticky notes, and am always making sure everything I can control is tidy and organized. I work well in a team and am passionate about success as I’m a fierce competitor, but I also love to read, write, and continue learning.

What do I value?

Happiness and spreading joy make me happy. While overstated, I truly do want to make the world a better place and contribute to the success of others. I value family and doing the right thing, travelling and appreciation for other cultures, and accepting life not as it is, but how it should be.

How did I get here?

While Oregon State wasn’t my first choice, I got here because it made sense. It was closer to home and less expensive, as well as it came with friends and people I knew already. Being in the College of Business was not my original intention; I started undeclared, not knowing what I wanted to do. I ended up with Management because I made friends in classes, watched the Office, and started to see how I could one day change the world.

Where am I going?

I’ve made some pretty safe choices and been mostly boring along this path. I have an internship at a corporate office that starts in a few weeks and I could see myself interviewing for a position for after graduation. This is great in the sense that it’s secure and a seemingly normal way to go, with a house and one day hopefully a family to go along with that white picket fence. I’m not sure I’m happy with that though, as I want to travel a lot more and feel young for a lot longer too.

I chose to take the shorter of the two tests, but still found the results to be around what I expected them to be. The test shows various levels and measures of several aspects of each personality trait. I scored moderately in extroversion, while avoiding excitement and large crowds. My agreeableness was pretty high across the board. My highest personality trait by far was conscientiousness, where I had especially high levels in orderliness and efficacy. Neuroticism was low, with a slight spike in anxiety. That makes sense because it’s college and Corona, so a lot going on. The last trait, openness to experience, was also fairly low for me besides liberalism.

Going deeper into the results, I think potential employers would look positively at the results of this test. A large strength that is easily observable comes from the high scores in all categories of conscientiousness. This is the trait that is most strongly correlated with job performance, and would demonstrate my ability to stay organized, remain motivated, and be highly efficient in accomplishing tasks. Another strength would be maturity or emotional stability, as my low scores in neuroticism show. Building off of that too is my agreeableness, as employers will value someone they can trust and depend on, who cares about others and cooperates well. Teamwork is particularly important in a work setting.

Potential weaknesses are demonstrated in the test results as well. A lack of creativity through a low openness to experience could be detrimental, depending on the job field and specific creative tasks required of me. Employers might also look for employees that have higher levels of risk taking or adventurousness, people that are going to come in and be innovative or entrepreneurial. Additionally, different employers could value extroversion at different levels. This is also very job dependent as more customer-oriented roles would naturally demand higher levels of extroversion.