Running head: Career Planning Assessment Report 1

Career Planning Assessment Report

Christine Gitonga

Wilmington University
Career Planning Assessment Report 2

Career Planning Assessment Report

Experiences That Motivated My Human Services Career

While I was in Kenya, I used to take to take care of my grandmother who after being diagnosed

with Diabetes had to have her leg amputated. She had to have around the clock care and most of

the time I was there with her. A few months later, I had to move to the United States for my

college education and my first job was at a group home in Upper Darby Pa. I fell in love with my

clients who were both confined to a wheelchair and were diagnosed with down syndrome. Each

day that I worked with them convinced me that I should change my major from pursuing a

degree in animal sciences to a major in human services. While working at Mel-Mark, during

Autism month, clients at my job would get in free when they visited Philadelphia zoo and I

would take them to visit. They also had clients participating by wearing the color blue and

walking around the campus with autism awareness banners.

Strengths Finders Summary

According to the strengths finders report, my five top themes are empathy, harmony, consistency,

adaptability and Developer. In summary, the report stated that by nature I tend to hear other

peoples emotions and that often leads to me interpreting their unspoken messages that are

hidden behind their deeds and words. I trust my own intuition. By reading peoples emotions, I

increase my chances of responding to the person appropriately and at the right time.

When it comes to Harmony, my personality doesnt like conflict and I tend to want to do things

properly. Its my nature to show consideration to others, but at the same time I am inclined to

figure out what my friends want to do. Im more likely to seek out and listen to others opinions

before I express my own views.

Career Planning Assessment Report 3

Consistency is one of my themes too whereby I tend to deal with people the same way. I favor

the company of those who tend to avoid conflict and prefer things that dont consume every

minute of my day. When it comes to adaptability, it states that I tend to be flexible and not

flustered by unexpected events. I occasionally let today take care of itself and believe that

tomorrow will bring its own demands. Being a developer is one of my skills too; I take time to

discover someones likes, dislikes, hopes and dreams. I gain a lot of satisfaction from making

someone feel valuable.

The activity revealed to me that I need to use my talents to build a network of people with

differing perspectives. Their opinions come in handy, when I need some other persons expertise

other than my own. I should also learn how to practice my techniques in such a way that I avoid

confrontation. In addition, to better my interpersonal relationships, I should create interactions

and forums in which people feel like their opinions are being heard.

Difference Between the MAPP Assessment and Strengths Report

The MAPP assessment summarizes the level of your skills in four areas; critical thinking,

reading, writing and mathematics, while the strengths report assesses how you should deal with

your five unique strength skills. The strengths assessment assesses what skills you have that will

help you perform better at your job while the MAPP assessment assesses your temperament,

aptitude, how you reason, how you get along with people and your mathematical and language

capacity. By taking the MAPP assessment, Im not quite sure I agree with the results stating that

I love creative writing and that I have journalistic motivations. However, I am empathetic in the

personal lives of others. I love to voluntarily help my clients achieve their tasks and even my

fellow coworkers rely on me helping them complete their tasks.

Career Planning Assessment Report 4

Career Choice

When I looked up human services jobs on the website, I came up with a career as a rehabilitation

counselor. Rehabilitation counselors work to help individuals with physical, mental and

developmental disabilities. Their responsibility is to help them overcome the daily stresses of not

being able to do things on their own. They mainly work in rehabilitation centers, senior citizen

homes and group homes. Employment rate seems to be growing on a yearly basis and they do

require one to be licensed to become a counselor.

Most Rehabilitation counsellors work a typical 40 hr. a week schedule. One does require a

masters degree in rehab counselling. The program lasts about two years. One of the electives

you could take in the field include; marriage and family counselling, substance abuse

rehabilitation and stress management.

I would say Im a person whos driven by my talents to ensure all clients are provided with their

basic necessities. One of the requirements to being a counselor, is being able to look at resources

to better their quality of life. One needs to be computer savvy in order to know where to locate

resources needed. To work in this field, you have to ensure that you market yourself in a timely

manner and that when you are dealing with insurance companies, your clients are being paid.

One of my greatest strengths that I have is communication. Being able to communicate issues on

time to the other party, goes a long way to ensuring the clients needs are met on time.

Organization is key too while working in the human services field. One needs to be able to

organize their files in a way that when the state comes for their yearly audit, you are able to pull

out the information in an easy manner. Being organized helps you to set goals for now and the

future. One tends to be more successful when they are organized; it helps with time management.
Career Planning Assessment Report 5

I should say my nonverbal cues could get better. While speaking to my clients or their families,

its best to keep eye contact. I usually smile more with them and try and answer their questions.

While being friendly to my clients and their families, I try to keep in consideration their cultural

norms. In some cultures, they prefer that you keep a distance and not be too close to their

personal space.

I believe one of my weaknesses that I need to address in order to be successful working in this

field is my decisive thinking skills. When faced with multiple tasks that have deadlines, I find

myself being overwhelmed and not sure of the quality of my work. Being afraid to hand it crappy

work, I find myself going over the data over and over and still not being sure. I realize if Im

dealing with documents that have a time stamp on it, that I have to trust my instincts and realize

that I have done a good job.

Being able to listen well to other peoples needs is essential to making sure that the utmost care is

provided. My weakness in listening to other peoples concerns is when I cut them short and not

give them a chance to voice their own opinion. I should also be aware that my tone of voice

could be misleading and work on it. Sometimes, how I say things is taken to be that Im being

rude when that may not be the case. I should learn to refrain from yelling back at my coworkers

even if they started the argument; its good sometimes to have a third staff around to help diffuse

the situation.
Career Planning Assessment Report 6