Before you can make informed and appropriate decisions about your career, future or life, you first need to know yourself. What you like and dislike, your strengths and weaknesses, what drives you and your aspirations. Use the resources introduced here to go on a journey of self discovery. Take time to introduce yourself and get to know you.
A word of caution
Going it alone when rating your strengths and weaknesses and choosing a suitable career can be tricky and inaccurate. To have help in really getting to know yourself, to make decisions and to be challenged on your decisions, talk over your self-assessments, completed resources and ideas over with someone you trust to be honest, trustworthy and insightful is usually essential. This may be your supervisor, colleague, family member or you may wish to consider accessing mentors, coaches and/or counsellors.
Models & Resources
The MEDI Career Planning Model provides an overview of the components of making an informed career decision. The following resources take you step by step through the reflective and decision making processes that are required to make informed and appropriate career choices. Remember to record, reflect and re-visit the answers to the resources you complete. Career decision making is a dynamic process that is influenced by many different things. You may wish to repeat certain resources fairly regularly to ensure you don’t forget about you and to make sure you are still on track to your preferred destination.
The book, Elton C, Reid J. The ROADS to success. 2nd ed. Postgraduate Deanery for Kent, Surrey and Sussex; 2008, is primarily aimed at Foundation Trainees (and medical students) however it may be of use to all doctors as it contains activities and a challenging way of approaching reflection and career decisions to make sure you know what you are doing and why. It can be used independently however to make full use of the book it should be used with (and contains information for) a supervisor.
Use Windmills Online to help yourself to evaluate your current position and which direction you should go from here.
The University of London Careers department present SORTIT, for which you have to register (free) but then it stores your results for future review. To learn more about you, your values, your skills, your working style and your personality use the resources in the “Self Knowledge section”
The GP Career Toolkit is a fantastic, step by step resource to help GPs review their current and future career plans.
Anita Houghton published a series of articles in the StudentBMJ to help medical students understand their personality type. Knowing this she helped students to identify careers that may be suited to them.
- Houghton A. Understanding personality type: introduction. StudentBMJ. 2004; 12: 336-7.
- Houghton A. Understanding personality type: extraversion and introversion. StudentBMJ. 2004; 12: 410-1.
- Houghton A. Understanding personality type: sensing and intuition. StudentBMJ. 2004; 12: 456-7.
- Houghton A. Understanding personality type: how do you make decisions. StudentBMJ. 2005; 13: 20-1.
- Houghton A. Understanding personality type: how do you like to live your life. StudentBMJ. 2004; 15: 62-3.
- Houghton A. Understanding personality type: how it relates to job satisfaction. StudentBMJ. 2004; 15: 108-9.
The resource Matching Personality type to career was created through summarising Anita Houghton's work to utilise the information set out in the above StudentBMJ series.
Go to
Sci-59, this is a resource that asks multiple questions of you in order to match you to potentially suited careers. It is not a prescriptive exercise and results should be taken as a suggestion rather than a direction. However the act of completing the resource if you take the questions seriously can help you to learn about yourself.
Strengths, Weaknesses, Likes and Dislikes
Find out what skills you have and those that you wish to develop through completing What are your skills? Using this resource you can add to your personal development plan and the answers will help you when completing some of the other resources below.
We spend so much time looking after other people, sometimes we forget to consider ourselves. Through completing Doing what you like and are good at and reflecting on your answers, you will learn more about your strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes which will enable you to make better informed career choices. When completing this you may find it helpful to refer to the answers from What are your skills?
The London Deanery present SORTIT you have to register (free) to use the site but then it stores your results for future review. To learn more about you, your values, your skills, your working style and your personality use the resources in the “Self Knowledge section”.