Career Planning Assignment

Career Planning Assignment

Kierra Cephas
Wilmington University

Career Planning Assignment

Why Human Services?

Ever since high school, I was always the one that my friends came to for advice. Now
this advice ranged from school, to boys or family matters. I was the go-to person for giving
advice because I was mature beyond my years. Even to this day, I still have friends who will call
or text me if they are going through things and I encourage them and give them the best advice to
my knowledge or base it off of past experiences that I have had. My desire for the human service
and/or social work field stemmed from that and I also wanted to follow in my mothers footsteps.
My mother is a human service worker and growing up, she was always helping others.
I will admit, in high school, I struggled when asked, What field do you want to go in
when you graduate? I really did not know and I took several quizzes and assessments to try and
find a career that I was interested in based off of a series of personality questions. We were
required to use the Occupational Outlook Handbook to research fields of interest. Back then, I
was looking for a job where I was going to be making lots of money such as a nurse, lawyer or
accountant. However, none of those interested me and as much as I admired people in scrubs and
thought to myself, I could get all of the cute looking scrubs and be a nurse! However, I have a
weak stomach so I knew that was not the path for me!
In my junior year in high school, I became pregnant with my daughter. Now, I was only
fifteen at the time and I was terrified! That experience right there really made me want to work
with young teenagers. So many of our teen girls become pregnant and stop there. Their dreams
and goals are crushed and they feel helpless. Through my experience as a teenage mother, I know
that I can relate to that population. The adolescent years are challenging and there are so many
risk factors that can lead teens to make unwise choices. Those experiences that I went through as
a teen mother encouraged me to do better and to make something of myself. Now, here I am 24
years old and a month away from completing my Masters Degree. I want to help people above
all and the Human Service field is a perfect opportunity for that!

Career Planning Assignment

Strengths Finder
In every interview I have ever been to, they would always ask what are some of your
strengths? I sometimes struggled with this question because I would focus on my weaknesses
more so than what I was good at. However, out of all of the assessments I have ever taken in my
lifetime, I must say that this one was the absolute best and I will not hesitate to answer this
question ever again. Not only was the book interesting to read, the assessment was totally
accurate! I read the descriptions for my top five and was amazed at how on point the words were.
The strengths finder activity revealed that my top five are: deliberative, responsibility, input,
adaptability and harmony. Out of the five top strengths that this assessment revealed, I would
have to say that deliberative was the most accurate strength that I possess. It was sort of a battle
between deliberative and adaptability as far as hitting that nail on the head.
I am in fact a very vigilant and private person. I have social media accounts, but I do not
put all of my business out there for everyone to see. If you do not personally know me, you do
not know much about me and I am the same way in the workplace. I do not participate in gossip
nor do I freely share personal information about my life to my co-workers. My selection of
friends can be counted on one hand and not even my close friends know everything about me
or what I do.
As far as adaptability, several characteristics stood out to me as being very accurate.
Primarily the fact that I live in the moment and I see my future constantly changing. Why?
Because life is constantly changing and you never know what may happen down the road such as
relationships and even your career. I know at this moment that whatever I choose to do, I want to
be in a position to help people. Right now, I can say that I want to work with the adolescent
population but once I really get going in my career and get some more in depth experience, that
path may change and I plan for that detour in my mind.

Career Planning Assignment

My mother always told me that I hoard things because I HATE throwing things away
because you never know if you may need it later on. I would just collect a bunch of junk but I
kept everything neat because of my organization skills. I probably stopped at the age of twelve,
but for the longest time, at the foot of my bed, I collected maybe 20 stuffed animals. I treated
them as if they were my children and from reading the description on input, it shows that I am
inquisitive and appreciate the world for its complexity and variety. Harmony and responsibility
were also accurate because I was always the more responsible amongst my friends and more
responsible than my older sister. People would often times think that I was the big sister because
of my maturity level. I was also the peacemaker amongst my friends when there was conflict.
MAPP Assessment
The MAPP assessment was interesting to take as well. I am always interested in different
assessments and personality tests to test the accuracy and to learn more about why I am the way I
am. So by taking these assessments, it really gave me that insight that I desire. This particular
career assessment was different from the strength finder assessment because it asked more
questions geared towards finding your career interests vs assessing what your strongest attributes
are. The questions on the strengths finder survey asked questions pertaining to the simple
nuances that make you stand out and on the MAPP assessment the questions were geared
towards observing the type of work and/or activities you would prefer over another.
The MAPP assessment broke down the results in nine different Worker Trait Codes;
interest in job content (those tasks that I want to perform), temperament for the job (how I prefer
to perform tasks), aptitude for the job (expressing of performing tasks), people (how I relate to
people), things (how I relate to things), data (how I relate to data), reasoning (how I relate to
reasoning), mathematical capacity (how I relate to the applied use of math) and language
capacity (how I relate to the use of language). Although I did not see the full assessment, what
little was revealed appeared accurate in most of the categories.

Career Planning Assignment

There are some key highlights from some of the sections that I will touch on. As far as
my interest in job content, I am motivated by a self-felt, self-accepted calling to the cause of
good, growth, and gain in the lives of others and my perception is holistic which means that I
like looking at the bigger picture. Going forward in my career, this will enable me to analyze all
types of situations and see the situation wholly and not partially. One similarity amongst both
assessments showed that I have little need for being recognized or to feel that I am in
competition with someone. I strongly believe that there is little need for feeling recognized (to a
certain extent) in the human service field. That is because this a helping field and the focus
should be on our clients and not on being recognized for helping that person. After all, it is your
job!
In the category of temperament, it is 100% accurate that I desire to work under
management or supervision of others who are competent and knowledgeable in their area of
expertise. If I am working with someone who does not have the knowledge to their job
efficiently, how can I learn? You are supposed to be able to learn from your superior so that is a
must in any work environment that I may enter. In relation to dealing with people, I am described
as a mentor or a trusted counselor. This correlates with the beginning of my paper when I
discussed that I have always been like a mentor to my friends when they come to me with
dilemmas. I am naturally motivated to help others to the best of my ability. Overall, this career
assessment confirmed that I am in the right field.
U.S. Bureau of Statistics
In high school, I constantly visited this website because I did not know what I wanted to
do for the longest time. However, I recall always clicking on social work. Partially, because that
is what my mother did for a living and I have no idea why but I always enjoyed filling out
paperwork. I know that paperwork is a must when dealing with case management and social
work. For this assignment, I chose Social and Community Service Manager.

Career Planning Assignment

A social and community service manager is responsible for coordinating and supervising
social service programs and community organizations. Their duties include designing and
overseeing programs to meet the needs of the target population or community, developing and
managing budgets for programs and organizations, planning and managing community outreach
efforts to advocated for increased awareness of programs, suggesting and implementing
improvements to programs and services, writing proposals or grants for funding, analyzing data
to determine the effectiveness of programs and establishing methods to gather information about
the impact of programs. (BLS, 2015) All of these job duties sounds extremely familiar because
this is what I have been exposed to since I have been at my placement agency. I often work under
the community program manager at my internship who does all of the above for the specific
demographic population; the youth.
The typical work environment for a social and community service manager is for a social
and human service organization. An important aspect of their career is evaluating and showing
that their programs are effective. In order to accomplish this, they collect statistics and other
information to evaluate the impact that their programs have on the community or on their
specific target population. (BLS, 2015) Going into this field, it is important that you have the
necessary knowledge on how to know if a program is effective or ineffective. If there are specific
areas to improve on, a social and community service manager must have the ability to assess the
program and identify the areas that can be improved on.
The specific leadership skills that I would bring to this chosen field is the fact that I am
motivated to manage others on a social or organizational basis as part of overall vocational
responsibility. I already possess the ability to interact and associate with people and I adapt well
to change. In this field of study, people and circumstances are constantly changing, so it is
important to know how to deal with change and adapt fast. This field can also be challenging in

Career Planning Assignment

the sense that it is demanding. According to my top strength adaptability, I am a very flexible
person who can stay productive when the demands of work is pulling me in different directions.
That is also something that I have observed at my internship, so I adapt fast and I am very
flexible.
The specific strengths that I possess to successfully do this job include, responsibility,
empathy, problem solving, adaptability and consistency. These are great strengths to have when
entering a helping field. If you are unemotional and do not show empathy towards people and
their situations, then you are not in the right field. People are able to sense whether you care or
not and if they are coming to you for that assistance, you must guide them towards selfsufficiency. The fact that I take responsibility and commit to whatever it is that I am responsible
for and follow it through until it is complete. I am not the type of person that likes leaving things
unfinished. Even now, I am determined to complete this paper and not take another break until it
is completed. When things are done, I feel a sense of success and it lessens my stress level.
In the past, I would constantly ponder on my weaknesses rather than what I was actually
good at. So discussing my weaknesses is not an issue. One of my biggest weaknesses and
something that I know I have to work on is my attitude and approach to certain circumstances. I
am genuinely a nice person but if someone does something that is in the form of betrayal or
deceit, I tend to take that very serious. After all, I am a very serious person and I do not take a lot
of things lightly. I believe that I have to learn to embrace life more and learn not to allow petty
things to stress me out. The smallest things can frustrate me and cause me to lose sight
sometimes!
Another challenge that I believe I will have is the ability to control my emotions. I can
become attached to people easily and they can really have an imprint on my heart. In the human
service field, you cannot allow your emotions to show in that sense. One of the questions that
was asked on the Strengths Finder survey was whether you cry easily and that selected that that

Career Planning Assignment

was absolutely me. I look at other peoples situations sometimes and it breaks my heart. Even if I
am simply watching a movie or television show that I know is not realistic, it still makes me
emotional and I will shed a tear. Why? Because I know situations like that occurs in real life and
I know that I may have to deal with a similar situation like that. So how I can further manage my
emotions is really something that I am interested in learning more about so that I can develop the
necessary skills and have the knowledge to deal with them accordingly.

Career Planning Assignment

Reference
Online Career Test. (n.d.). Retrieved July 17, 2015, from
http://www.assessment.com/default.asp

Strengths Dashboard. (n.d.). Retrieved July 19, 2015, from

http://strengths.gallup.com/default.aspx
Summary. (n.d.). Retrieved July 19, 2015, from
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/social-and-community-servicemanagers.htm#tab-2