- The Wheel: Rate your confidence level on each quadrant to help set your priorities with your Career Coach on what to focus on in your 1:1 coaching sessions.
- Identify My Preference It’s important to consider the type of work environment that suits you best. We often know what we don’t like, but consider what you do like – where you feel and work at your best.
- Career Leader
If you have not settled on a career path, or you have, and you wish to go deeper in understanding your motivators, interest and the organizational culture that is going to be the best fit for your career, then take the time to complete a Career Leader Assessment. You can choose to book some time with your Career Coach once you arrive at Rotman to further explore how you can use Career Leader as a tool in navigating your search and zeroing in on what is most important to you.
Part I: Your Interests
We strongly believe that your interests, not skills, should be the foundation of your career. All too often, we see people make poor career choices for lots of reasons:
- Yielding to family or societal pressure
- Trying to “harvest” their career too early, before gaining the needed experience and savvy
- Being seduced by money or status
Part II: Connecting Your Motivators and Skills with Your Interests
We also believe that it is the combination of your interests, motivators, and skills that is the “hidden key” often overlooked in setting your career course. Your motivators (financial gain, security, etc.) and your skills (communication, quantitative analysis, etc.) are very important as modifying influences to your interests. But, it is your unique profile of all three factors that should drive how you approach your career in business.
Part III: Navigating Organizational Culture and Avoiding Career Breakdowns
Overlooked by many, several aspects of career satisfaction have more to do with your employer’s organizational culture than with the industry or functional role you have. The work culture may be critical in determining which company or business unit is best for you, even though it was all three factors (your interests, motivators, and skills) which led your search to that industry or functional role in the first place. Lastly, we all have personality features that can be strengths, or weaknesses, depending on the circumstances. At times, the “right” feature in the “wrong” situation could lead to a major breakdown in your career’s forward progress. Recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, and knowing when and where to utilize them, is essential for avoiding obstacles in your career progression.
If this is your first Career Leader account, please follow the instructions below:
- Visit https://www.careerleader.com/sign-in.html and follow the onscreen prompts to the NEW USER section of the page.
- Enter your Rotman email address.
- Enter your registration key: rotman-height (the hyphen is required).
- Once you have successfully logged in and registered your account, you will be brought to your user dashboard. There, you will be able to click on TAKE THE TEST for each of the three inventories (INTERESTS, MOTIVATORS, SKILLS).
Your personalized results are in each of the six sections on the dashboard (for which there are buttons to click). Your printable personalized CareerLeader Report is available within the Toolbox section of the user dashboard.
Students with an existing Career Leader account (some of you may have used Career Leader at another school) are to log in as RETURNING USER with the email and password attached to your original account.
Deadline: Optional, but highly recommended
Welcome Class of 2019! We look forward to meeting you during the month of August. While most of your career preparation will begin in your foundations term, there is much you can do to get ahead before your arrive at Rotman. Most of the reading and exercises contained through the Career Section of the Pre-Insider, are optional, however we highly recommend that you take the time now to dive further into career exploration and self-assessment to put you in the right frame of mind. It is more difficult to find the time and head space to do these types of exercises once your academic term begins. These exercises will help you not only in your initial career coaching sessions but they will serve as important career management tools throughout your time at Rotman and beyond. Click here to learn more. Simply enter your name and any email address to access the recording.
