Self-Assessment: Identifying Skills and Planning Career Goals

This self-assessment assignment provides a detailed evaluation of the student's skills, attributes, and professional development goals. The document begins with an introduction to self-assessment, emphasizing its importance in career planning and personal growth. It includes self-reflection exercises, focusing on the student's interest in Information Technology and the role of an Information Security Analyst. The assignment then delves into the student's employability skills, such as critical thinking and interpersonal skills, as well as personal attributes, including ambition and honesty. The student identifies their strengths and discusses areas for professional development, including communication and coding skills, and outlines plans to improve in these areas. The summary emphasizes the student's passion, strengths, and commitment to achieving their career goals in the IT industry, highlighting their intention to leverage their skills and experience for both personal and organizational benefit.

Running head: SELF-ASSESSMENT
Self-Assessment
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1SELF-ASSESSMENT
Table of Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................................ 2
Self-Reflection Exercises.......................................................................................................2
Employability Skills and Personal Attributes..........................................................................2
Identified strengths.................................................................................................................3
Professional Development.....................................................................................................4
Summary................................................................................................................................5
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Introduction
Self-assessment is something that everyone does and everyone should. For
example, people tend to assess action to understand the unfavourable outcome. Some
examples that we often come across, analysing the low mark that we got in the exam, what
was said, to address the gathering in the social event, or maybe how we performed in the
game of football on a given day. Self-assessment is all about having an outlook at the skills,
motivation, goal, value, knowledge, and attributes of oneself. It is considered being both
sensible and healthy, it is also critical to understand self- assessment as many people have
a naive outlook or are too egoist to accept the flaws. Any career decision that we take and
want to follow, need assessment before the same is executed (Boud 2013). It is important
to understand and be aware of the interest, talent, and skill to make a sound decision.
According to the career decision, one should take necessary steps to overcome an
obstacle. Self-assessment is basically, assessing the past, present and the future to get an
insight into what someone is capable of accomplishing. How to set a goal and what are the
steps to be followed to achieve the career goal, need to be understood. It will give an idea
of where someone is heading in an aspect of a career, or maybe in life such as relationship
goals and life goals. It will determine the skill, value and attribute necessary for a given job
role to make a reasonable career. Everyone possesses some particular skills and
identifying these skills and enunciating them will set the path to career and personal
success (Arends 2014).
Self-Reflection Exercises
It is quite surprising that in today’s world knowledge is more powerful than anything
else, even more than money and respect. Majority of the organization are keen on hiring
the best to manage the security of the data, rival organizations are keen to acquire
knowledge of its rivals to overthrow throw them and security of data have become the prime
concern for any organization. Data have become more valuable than companies’
employees and data handlers, companies’ asset. IT has always fascinated me, as the age
of computers has ushered advancement in communication technology; it had brought an
information revolution all around the globe. Information Technology (IT) has become an
integral part of the information infrastructure and has contributed on a global scale
economically, culturally and socially. Apps, Computer software, Websites, Voice network,
Servers, Mobile Data are part of a larger information ecosystem. According to a research
article around more than 5.7 million people work as an IT professional globally in both
technical and non-technical roles (Boud, Lawson and Thompson 2013). My eyes are
focused on the role of Information security analysts, where one needs to be expert in
networking and computer security. Information security analyst handles every aspect of
network security such as firewall administration, network protocols, and data encryption
security. They may also handle other responsibilities such as developing security policies,
security audits or recommending an upgrade to data system security to avoid security
breach and conducting a risk assessment. It will give me an edge to handle the security of
an organization as well as will give me chance to explore the field of data security and risk
management. The job role is vibrant, way far from monotonous, as new challenges will
come across every day, and the role is an integral part of the security of an organization’s
data. The UK has recently been affected by a data breach, which affected the country’s
economy and made it vulnerable. Everyone should aim at the security of countries
resources as it also raises alarm in countries security and integrity (Brown and Harris
2013).
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Employability Skills and Personal Attributes
It is important to access personal attributes, as it will determine the necessity of
change and will help a person to formulate a strategy to accomplish these changes. By
incorporating these changes, one can access and represent himself/herself to the
employer. If someone does not know his or her capability how he/she can promote himself
to the employer, it is also hard for the employer to figure the employee if he is not able to
portray himself well. It is important for everyone to understand the requirement of
developing or acquiring certain skill set, to develop a personality that will help to create the
first impression on the employer. This personality attribute can range from communication
skill to software knowledge, which will determine and articulate the person and the
capability one has to complete a given task. Personal skills will help the employees to
interact with the employer and express themselves it will also help the employees to
manage themselves. As per my understanding and self-evaluation, what I understood that I
have certain abilities that will make me a potential candidate and the best employee in IT
field (Skovholt and Trotter-Mathison 2014). The Employability Skills that I feel gives me an
extra edge over other candidates is as followed:
 Critical Thinking
 Dependability
 Flexible
 Interpersonal skill
 Motivation
To achieve companies’ goal one need personal skills, these skills are in context to me are
outlined below:
 Ambition
 Confidence
 Honesty
 Innovation
 Optimism
 Resourceful
 Versatility
 Ethics
Identified strengths
Ambition: Ambition helps a person to achieve the unachievable. It is the reason that a
person is capable of doing the unthinkable. Ambition is necessary to achieve certain goal
that sounds unreasonable; my ambition at school was to lead my football team to victory as
I was leading the team as captain. Now my ambition is to be an entrepreneur after
gathering enough skill and experience in the field of Information technology (Lysaker et al.
2013).
Confidence: Self-confidence according to me, is when someone enjoys what they are
doing rather than being concerned about the outcome. Passionate about the work in hand
will bring out the best. Acceptance of weakness and trying to overcome it is the true nature
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of a confident personality. I was asked to host the annual fest of high school, as the boy
who was to host the fest fell sick on the very day. I had no formal experience or knowledge,
I was given a list of the itinerary and an hour to prepare myself. I did host the show and
found my confidence and courage played a major part for the success (Verbert et al. 2013).
Honesty: Honesty is a virtue, the way I was brought up have deep influence on me so far.
Honesty has always been the prime focus of my parents and it can be said that I find this
trait to be hereditary.
Innovation: I always had a creative outlook about the way a project is to be done. To do
things differently and finding ways to complete a task effectively and efficiently, has always
been my prime focus. If a given task is, perceived differently, keeping few factors in mind
such as unarticulated needs, better solutions to meet new requirements and existing market
need, then completing the task will be less laborious with extraordinary outcome. Winning
the best innovative mind at my school is what I considered to be an achievement ( Tilson
and Simonsen 2013).
Optimism: Having an optimistic outlook, has helped me in grievous situation to gather
myself and come out with a solution, it had helped me to muster courage to take challenges
and completing the task with flying colours. Because of optimism I like to take work an extra
mile as I know, putting on extra effort never harmed anyone but can show appellant result.
Resourceful: Because of resourcefulness and Public relation, I was asked to hold events
for community service and high school events. This made me acquainted with different
steps of organization an event (Tymon 2013).
Versatility: In the current market one need to be versatile to overcome obstacle and be
productive. It also helps one to thrive, gather knowledge, and be dynamic in any given
situation. My familiar with both IT software as well as graphics designing software, on top of
that I have done a brief course on editing software for both 2D and 3D objects and motion
graphics will give me the versatility that i require in the field of IT.
Ethics: favouring biasness has never been in my character along with that, having ethics is
what makes a person different from other person in a good way. I remember if found a 5-
dollar note on the road which was of someone else and I did not to earn that. Therefore, I
gave that money to a beggar, who needed the money, the most in that way I kept my ethics
clean and my conscience clearer (Jones 2013).
Professional Development
To be the best in the IT industry in is necessary to have certain skills in the kitty to give an
extra edge over other candidates. However, it is quite important to keep up-to date of the
latest trend and technology to grow in the industry. Certain skills are mandatory and used
by employees in every field, which are also necessary from an employer point of view.
Some of the basic skills that need improvement are:
Communication skill: The communication skill is one field where I have to improve a lot as
at times I am too introvert and it would be hard for the colleagues and the manager to have
an effective communication with me. To acquire this skill I will be joining Communication
classes (Rao 2014).
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Coding: I know the basic knowledge of coding but in-depth knowledge of the subject will
help me grow in the industry. To help myself I will join classes for HTML and C++, in order
to get in depth knowledge of coding.
Time management: Time management is an important trait, which helps an individual to
effectively work and segregate different task based on priority. As I want to grow and
acquire more knowledge in the field, time management will help me to learn and earn along
with managing my personal and professional life. For this, I will arrange task based on
priority and will try to complete it in given period (Carland, Carland and Carland III 2015).
Some of the employment skill that needs attention:
Team building: Any organization wants its employees to have leadership quality, as it will
be easy for the organization to develop and harness from new set of people, required to
lead the organization. Team building will help me grow within the organization, as it is one
of the basic requirements of an organization (Haff and Triplett 2015).
QA (software quality assurance): To give quality product and service to the organization,
one needs to have sound knowledge of the product and the service. It requires both
analytical skills and technical ability to be effective in the field. I have planned to go to
seminars conducted by different organization on how to deliver quality and consistence.
Database Management: As I aspire to move onto security, I have to be acquainted with
every nuance of database. From its structure to management, to top this I will be taking
classes in database management (Webber and Porter 2016).
Summary
To summarise to reach to the dream designation, I have to give onto a whole lot, in
my personal development as well as technicality of the job. I know what I am passionate
about and where my strength lies. I will work with my strength to reach to the position I want
and the organization I will work with will be benefitted by harnessing my strength and skills.
However, I have certain skills that are going to help me to master other skills, required for
this job. After acquiring the skill, I will gather enough knowledge and experience in the
industry to know every niche of the sector. It will help me network as well as keep myself
updated. It will also develop my overall skill thus, road to reaching my dream designation
will be clear.
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