Assessments

DISCOVER | Self Directed Search | Iseek

DISCOVER

Career Services offers the computerized DISCOVER Career and Educational Planning System to students and prospective students to:

• Learn about work-related interests, skills and values
• Investigate occupations
• Formulate career options
• Identify career-related majors
• Access up to date information about occupations and educational opportunities
• Research information on colleges, technical schools and military programs
• Improve job-seeking skills, with resume and letter writing tips and videos of sample interviews.

DISCOVER is very user friendly and students can access the program through ACT.

To log in to DISCOVER, enter "BSU-" followed by your student id.  e.g. BSU-00123456

You will then be asked to select a password and fill out your personal information.  If you are currently not a BSU student, contact our office at 218-755-2038 for an access code.

If you are not currently a student, contact our office for an access code

The DISCOVER program can assist you in:

• Learning about yourself to find occupations that fit you
  • Discover will suggest new job families after each of three inventories (Interest, Abilities, and Values)
  • Discover will create a summary to identify occupations that correspond with the inventories you took

  • You can research those occupations the Inventories suggest

• Planning your education
  • View required majors by occupation or occupations by selected major

  • Find appropriate schools at any level of education
  • Find scholarship/aid information

• Planning for work
  • Access information on writing cover letters and resumes

  • Access information regarding job searching and interviews regarding your field

Contact us to set up an appointment either by calling 218-755-2038 or emailing career@bemidjistate.edu.  Career Services offers individual appointments with a Career Counselor to review the DISCOVER results in more detail.

Self Directed Search

Career Services also offers the Self Directed Search (SDS) to students who are undecided on a major.  This is a booklet students complete to help them learn about themselves, their job choices and their career.   If students are uncertain about what occupations to consider, the SDS may help them to locate a small group of occupations for further consideration. The Self Directed Search booklet may help students explore what occupation to follow.  If a student already has an occupation in mind, the SDS may support that idea or suggest other possibilities.

Most students find that completing the Self Directed Search is helpful and fun.  The Self Directed Search is based on the premise that most people can be loosely classified into six different groups (through codes developed by John Holland).  These groups are six different personality types labeled:

• Realistic—people who are often good at mechanical or athletic jobs.  Realistic people like to work with things, like machines, tools or plants, and they like to work with their hands.  Realistic people are often practical and good at solving problems.
• Investigative—people who like to watch, learn analyze and solve problems.  Investigative people often like to work independently, tend to be good at math and science and enjoy analyzing data.
• Artistic—people who like to work in unstructured situations where they can use their creativity and come up with new ideas.  Artistic people enjoy performing (theater or music) and visual arts.
• Social—people who like to work directly with people rather than things. Social people enjoy training, instructing, counseling or curing others.  They are often good public speakers with helpful, empathetic personalities.
• Enterprising—people who like to work with other people: they particularly enjoy influencing, persuading and performing.  Enterprising people like to lead and tend to be assertive and enthusiastic.
• Conventional—people who are very detail-oriented and like to work with data.  Conventional people have good organizational and numerical abilities and are good at following instructions.  They also like working in structured situations.

Stop in to Career Services to take the Self Directed Search to see which category you fall into, and to determine jobs for you to consider for your career.

Career Services also offers other Career Interest Inventories for students to take to explore career options. 

Career Services counselors are willing to meet with students to review the results of any of the career assessments, and to provide information on majors, job outlooks, student resources, etc.

Iseek

Another great resource for students who are interested in doing  career assessments is  ISEEK.ORG.  This website has an online assessment where students can “Match Your Skills to Careers” and it also has on “On-line Assessments” section.  Just a few of the assessments offered are:

• The Birkman Method Career Style Summary
• The Career Key
• Career Search
• The Keirsey Temperament Sorter II (there is a fee involved with this one)
• Minnesota Career Interest assessment
• My Future

Research the ISEEK site fully as it is useful to plan your career, education and employment as well.