【Career】Career Exploration – using DISC to discover your work personalities

In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing job market, it is of great importance for students to get to know themselves better in terms of work personalities to be able to fit in the modern job market. On Friday afternoon, 24th February, the Office of Career Development (OCD) had an honor to invite Pei Chun Liao, one of our distinguished alumni, to give the lecture focused on the topic “Career Exploration — using DISC to discover your work personalities”. The invited speaker is the HR Business Partner at Fox Factory with abundant HR experience. She is also the current career consultant at NSYSU and has helped many students with their career planning. The career event held by OCD was attended by students from a variety of departments and nationalities. It was a truly practical and crucial opportunity for students to not only explore their personalities to find ideal and suitable jobs in the workplace but also to meet people across departments to build up their social network.

Participants listening to the lecture

The DISC assessment is a personality test measuring an individual’s behavior, communication style, and work preferences. It categorizes people into four primary personality types: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. Each personality type has unique characteristics and traits that can be used to identify the ideal career or job fit. By knowing what personalities students have, it would be easier for them to discover their preferred jobs.

Participants doing DISC assessment

The event commenced with a series of activities to help students understand the type of personality they belong to by categorizing them using the DISC assessment. Participants firstly were asked to select the adjectives that best describe them from the handout given by the speaker. Later on, people who were categorized as the same type of personality were grouped together for the activities. Discussion questions were then given to participants to facilitate class interaction. Students from each type of personality demonstrated the reasons that motivate them to work or attend an internship. Some claimed that they want to be recognized, gain practical experience, and accelerate personal growth. The work motivation varies depending on different types of people. Students could understand their own strengths, weaknesses, and areas of improvement after knowing their traits. Guidance was accordingly provided to leverage their strengths and overcome their weaknesses, which is believed to benefit students in their career exploration and help them achieve their career goals.

The participants were thrilled with the event and the opportunity and praised the event for its effectiveness in identifying their work personalities based on the DISC assessment. “I found the DISC assessment very useful and helpful in knowing and discovering my work personalities,” said Angela Wu, an IBMBA student at NSYSU. “After conducting the assessment, I am much clearer about what job fits me the most according to my characteristics, and I can make the best use of my strengths in the workplace.”

Group photo

The event benefited the participants and enabled them to be familiar with their work personalities, which is a valuable chance for participants to be acquainted with themselves and for them to optimize their strengths in the workplace. For example, knowing the way to prioritize tasks and what the fears might be could be a good referencing source when seeking jobs since they fully understand what their traits are. The OCD hopes that students can take advantage of this opportunity and apply what has been learned in the future and maximize the learning outcome.