Self-awareness is Key to Your Job Search

Self-awareness is the key to unlocking a world of job opportunities and leading you to personal and professional excellence. With an increased understanding of your strengths, areas to improve, and values, you can make well-informed career decisions, navigate challenges, and enhance your self-confidence. Self-awareness can also boost your job search and career success. With self-awareness, you’ll have the confidence you need to influence and persuade employers that you’re the right fit for the job. Also, when you have a clear understanding of your personality, it can help you to define what type of work you find most satisfying.

Self-awareness can also provide you with a clear sense of:

• Who you are

• What skills you can bring to the job

• What type of work do you value, and

• Aspects of work that motivate you.

This information is essential to showcase your capabilities and strengths on your resume and in job interviews. As well, when you know your strengths, you can use this information to your advantage to prepare for your job search.

The best way to approach a job interview in Canada is to know as much about yourself and your work style. 

When you complete the free Drake P3 personality assessment, you’ll receive a profile report that measures five fundamental behavioral dimensions:

• Dominance

• Extroversion

• Patience

• Conformity

• Conscientiousness.

With an understanding of these building blocks of your personality, you’ll identify what contributes to your job fit and career success.

What is Job Fit?

Job fit is a measure of what your likes and dislikes in a job and work environment. For example, if you think about a past job where you were highly satisfied, you likely had a strong job fit. That means that there was a high match between your job likes and the degree to which those elements were present.

With self-awareness, you can identify your preferences and search for jobs that provide those elements. For example, you may prefer jobs with a high degree of flexibility and freedom versus jobs that are highly structured. And when there is a great fit, you’ll achieve greater career satisfaction and success!

Job fit is also important to employers. Employers know that when the job fit is high, you will stay with their company and contribute to its success. It’s a win-win situation for you and the employer!

Canadian Employers Evaluate Four Areas

You may have the right skills, knowledge, education, and experience that the job requires, but lack job fit. With the absence of a job fit, employers will be concerned that you will not enjoy the job and you will leave. This can be costly for employers, so that’s why they focus on evaluating job candidates in four key areas: 

1. 1. Knowledge

2. Competencies

3. Experience, and 

4. Job fit (personal attributes and motivators).

Self-Awareness: A Critical First Step

When you truly understand your personality and key strengths, you set yourself up for personal and career success. You may have completed a personality assessment in the past. If you have, it’s helpful to review it. Again, this is helpful information to have when you are: 

• Writing your Canadian-style resume 

• Preparing a cover letter, or

• Getting ready for an important job interview.

If you have not completed a personality assessment, you can complete the Drake P3 Assessment® right now! 

Your results from the Drake P3 Assessment® will allow you to know and understand your personality and how you approach your work and colleagues. This is an important first step to achieving career success in Canada.

You can complete the assessment process online in less than 15 minutes and the process is simple.  

How Self-Awareness Can Help You in Your Job Search

There are many benefits to having a better understanding of your strengths, and here’s how it can help with your job search efforts:

1. Self-awareness will help you to identify jobs that are a good fit for you.

Some jobs naturally appeal to each of us. And when you truly know yourself, you’ll understand what makes some jobs more attractive than other jobs to you. For example, if you are introverted, you may be more attracted to roles that require less personal interaction. On the other hand, if you identify as extroverted, you’ll likely excel in a job role that requires more interaction with customers, vendors, and other employees.

When you know yourself and your attributes, it can help you to identify roles that will allow you to achieve success. However, you’ll still need to evaluate the role and the company to determine if both are right for you. Each role and company will be unique.

2. Self-awareness will improve your performance in job interviews.

When you know your strengths, you’ll show confidence when responding to questions that speak to job fit. Job fit refers to how well-suited someone is for the position. This is an important aspect that recruiters evaluate because it can reduce costly turnover if someone isn’t suitable for the job. To assess fit, an interviewer may ask: Describe a job you most enjoyed and what you liked about the job.

With self-awareness and a clear understanding of your strengths, you can share elements of the job that aligned with your strengths. For example, someone applying for a sales and marketing role can convey how their strong communication and leadership attributes allowed them to build trusting relationships with clients that led to achieving sales targets. And if these attributes are key components of the job, an interviewer will have greater confidence in their ability and fit for the role. 

3. Self-awareness will help you to develop more quickly on the job.

With self-awareness of your strengths and motivators, you can focus on your strengths to accelerate your career development. Self-awareness is less about fixing flaws, rather it’s about knowing and playing to your strengths. However, if you have a weakness in an area that is critical to the job role, this will likely lead to job dissatisfaction and lower performance. Again, understanding your strengths will allow you to do your best work with confidence and authenticity.

Increasing Your Self-Awareness

When you complete a personality assessment, you’ll understand your dominant personality strengths and be able to harness them to achieve job search and career success in Canada. It’s an essential first step to unleashing a world of opportunity in your professional and personal growth and development.

WRITTEN BY

Corinna Frattini

Senior Editor, Prepare for Canada

Corinna Frattini is the Senior Editor and Content Director for Prepare for Canada. She contributes articles to help newcomers achieve their goals in key areas related to living, working, and settling in Canada. With an extensive background in human resources and leadership development, her articles focus on what Canadian employers seek and how newcomers can continue their careers in Canada.

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