Published on Jun 18, 2024
As a first year student just finishing my first semester of college, it has become overwhelmingly apparent to me that I am not as certain about my future aspirations as I was once before. Coming into Mizzou I was undoubtedly going in the direction of pursuing a career in the Public Relations field. A few classes later and I have become overwhelmed with all the possibilities I could potentially aspire towards. Becoming an employee of the Career Center, I have been relieved in hearing similar past fears from seniors now ready to graduate with majors with which they feel confident. In addition, I have been introduced to an abundance of resources at the MU Career Center that are helping me narrow down a secure path to my overall plan for the future. One of the those tools is a FREE assessment called Focus2, where you can explore possible future educational and career plans.
Students can access Focus2 from the MU Career Center homepage with your University login. Once you have logged into Focus2 there are six separate (but fairly short) assessments to complete.
- At the top of the page, you can find “My Career Planning Readiness” which is a simple questionnaire to help you figure out where your starting point is.
- Under that, you will discover five self-assessments:
- Work Interest Assessment: This has you rate certain scenarios on a scale of one to five on how much you would enjoy doing them, and at the end, it gives you a corresponding Holland Code, which you can use to help you find careers information a variety of resources, including O*Net.
- Values Assessment: You will be shown multiple values in this one and you pick your top three.
- Personality Assessment: Choose between two phrases with which you most agree, resulting in information about your personality type (similar to MBTI types).
- Skills Assessment: Under this one, you are given several different types of skills and must choose three you identify with most.
- Leisure Assessment: This one asks you to rate phrases from one to five on what you would enjoy most in your spare time. In these results, you will receive a unique bar chart matching your leisure results.
After each individual assessment, students are presented with occupations that correspond with their results. Additionally, there will be a list of aligning majors at Mizzou, national median salary, and what job family it fits into. By clicking on any of these careers, you receive an in-depth report that includes the profession’s common required skills, values, conditions, educational requirements, outlook, earnings, potential advancements, and correlating professional associations. When you have finished the assessments, you can choose to combine anywhere from two to all of them and discover careers that match a mix of your personalized results.
The Career Center offers plenty of resources to all MU students to make the career planning process simpler. If you asked, most people would agree that college takes a lot of work if you want to be successful. It can become overwhelming and stressful, but it doesn’t always have to be, especially if you use your resources like the MU Career Center. It is much easier to stay focused when you have a plan to keep you on track.