Self-Awareness is understanding who you are, what your strengths and weaknesses are, where you are in your career, and where you want to go. It is the ability to quickly and easily respond to the request, “Tell me about yourself.”

True self-awareness requires a willingness to take a step back to analyze yourself and your place in the professional world, and to assess what you need to do to be successful. Being self-aware is key to both career success and interpersonal interactions. It is about understanding who you are and how you interact with others, and knowing how to compensate for any shortcomings you may have. By taking actions to become more self-aware you allow yourself to gain control of your career direction and your interactions with others.

The first step in becoming self-aware is to identify your strengths, skills, interests, and personality traits. Doing this will provide you with the vocabulary that you can use to describe yourself, to identify areas of career focus, and to validate that you are moving in the right career direction. It will also help you to create your personal brand so that you can clearly articulate and demonstrate what you have to offer others. We offer a variety of self-assessment tools on myplan to assist you with this process.