Are You Ready for Your Job Search?
Personal Traits that Create Success and Opportunities
The Personal Agency Person
Ten Important Outcomes in Professional Education

Are You Ready for Your Job Search?
Your answers to this self-administered checklist may yield some important clues to where you are in your career planning/job search. Answer each question "Yes" or "No." Then tally your answers at the end of the form. Don't be discouraged if your score is low. At Scripps College Career Planning & Resources there are many services to assist you in your career planning and job search.

Personal Traits that Create Success and Opportunities

• Good writing skills
• Good oral communication and public speaking skills
• Good computer skills
• An inquiring mind with rapid learning skills
• Be an excellent team player
• Good organizations skills
• Ability to work alone with minimal supervision
• Enthusiasm
• High level of motivation and initiative
• Adaptability to new environments, people & technology
• Thorough documentation of work activities
• Punctuality
• Open to constructive criticism
• Good personality
• Imagination, creativity, high energy and focus
• Ability to work on multiple projects simultaneously
• Ability to work with diverse groups of people
• Ability to cooperate with management and peers
• Conscientiously and attention to detail
• Asking precise questions
• Asking for help when needed
• Sense of professional and personal responsibility
• Not being discouraged by initial failures

The Personal Agency Person

The worker of the future is considered to be a person who is a self-developing individual, one who uses personal agency, and can adapt to change. The worker of the future must develop new and different attitudes about work per se and about career development. The idea of positive uncertainty (Gelat, 1996) suggests that the future worker will shed obsolete beliefs and narrow views of the past to develop a future sense. Thus, limited thinking will change to prospective visions of what the future may offer. In essence, the uncertainty of the future should not inhibit, but instead should challenge the worker to meet changes that will surely come.

The personal agency person has an evolving profile. First, we consider some basic assumptions. The true personal agency person may not exist. The profile of the personal agency person will change and evolve along with changing work environments and requirements. The degree to which a person matches the descriptions of the personal agency person does not guarantee success and satisfaction in the workplace, now or in the future. What we have are some descriptions of what is considered to be the future archetypal organization person (Kleinfield, 1996).

The Personal Agency Person Profile

Examples of basic shifts in thinking:

• Does not feel entitled
• Assumes responsibility for the future
• Assumes a lifelong learning responsibility
• Dismisses obsolete beliefs about work
• Does not take any job for granted
• Assumes that personal involvement is key to success
• Is aware of and appreciates cultural differences
• Depends on own initiative
• Views the future with vision and imagination
• Has little fear of change
• Can deal with certainty
• Believes creativity is a basic requirement
• Focuses on innovation
• Considers change as both positive and necessary
• Believes good interpersonal relations is an employee's responsibility
• Is completely receptive to new ideas
• Assumes that there are few guarantees for the future
• Assumes that the organization does not owe anyone a career

Mode of Action:

• Is very functional in basic skills
• Creates effective changes in work assignments
• Cooperates with teams of workers and supervisor
• Strives for relationships to enhance career opportunities
• Develops methods to improve effectiveness of job assignment
• Exhibits high levels of resourcefulness and imagination
• Takes advantage of opportunities to develop skills and learn more about job assignments
• Consciously strives to understand different races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations
• Develops overview and knowledge of total work environment, company purpose and policies
• Strives to perform to the best of his or her ability at all times
• Builds relationships with mentors
• Creatively demonstrates how products or services can be improved
• Assumes total responsibility for career development

Ten Important Outcomes in Professional Education
From a study by the University of Michigan, Strengthening the Ties that Bind

1. COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE
Reading, writing, speaking and listening are skills essential to professional practice and to continued professional growth, as well as to informed citizenry and continued personal growth.

2. CRITICAL THINKING
Professionals need a repertoire of thinking strategies that will enable them to acquire, evaluate and synthesize information and knowledge. Since much professional practice is problematical, students need to develop analytical skills to make decisions in both familiar and unfamiliar circumstances.

3. CONTEXTUAL COMPETENCE
The capability to adopt multiple perspectives allows the graduate to comprehend the complex interdependence between the profession and society. An enlarged understanding of the world and the ability to make judgments in light of historical, social, economic, scientific and political realities is demanded of the professional, as well as the citizen.

4. AESTHETIC SENSIBILITY
Sensitivity to relationships among the arts, the natural environment and human concerns epitomizes aesthetic awareness. Through learning to approach life as an aesthetic experience and by viewing work as an act of aesthetic judgment, professionals can more effectively assess and understand the world and their roles within it.

5. ADAPTIVE COMPETENCE
A liberally educated person has an enhanced capacity to adapt to and anticipate changes in society. Since professional practice is not static, adaptability can be fostered by promoting the need to detect and respond to changes and make innovations in professional practice.

6. LEADERSHIP CAPACITY
All education carries with it the responsibility of developing leadership capacity. This is particularly true for professional education where the problem-decision-action cycle may have broad environmental, social, and individual ramifications. Not only does leadership imply both functional and status obligations, it requires the intelligent, humane application of knowledge and skills.

7. SCHOLARLY CONCERN FOR IMPROVEMENT
The heart of the intellectual process is attention to a spirit of inquiry, critical analysis or logical thinking. While many critical analysis skills are developed as theory and practice are integrated, professionals should be involved in, or at least keep abreast of, current inquiry, research, and improvement of the profession.

8. MOTIVATION FOR CONTINUED LEARNING
A truly educated person will wish to continue learning throughout life. In professional education, substantial emphasis can be placed on fostering individual responsibility for continued professional growth.

9. PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY
Professional identity both parallels and supplements the liberal education goal of developing a sense of personal identity. The sense of personal worth and self-confidence that develops from experiencing success in professional practice, often including a contributing or altruistic relationship with clients, is an effective vehicle for gaining a sense of one’s place in the world as an individual and citizen.

10. PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
Liberally educated individuals are expected to have developed value systems and ethical standards that guide their behavior. Since in every field professionals face choice and responsibility in the process of making decisions with full understanding of their consequences, the study of ethics provides a context for development of professional ethics.