Using Self-Assessment To Find Your New Career After Disability

It happens to many who experience disability: you can no longer continue to do what you’ve been doing for work, causing a total disruption to employment. Your thoughts may quickly move to asking, “What should I do now?” Getting to the answer might seem quite a challenge, to say the least.

The good news is there’s a framework for what to do – and expert help.

Whether due to physical or mental limitations, this change often calls for a reassessment of strengths, skills and abilities to identify new roles that better accommodate your needs. This process isn’t just about finding another job. Instead, it’s about understanding your unique abilities so you can thrive in a new, fulfilling career. Combining this with the services of a trained, experienced vocational expert such as those with Allsup Employment Services (AES) will help you find the answers you need.

Why Self-Assessment Is Essential For Change

When you need to change direction, its best to have a plan.

Accepting the first job you’re able to do may or may not work. It’s understandable to jump at the first offer, as rising bills and little cash flow tend to create an undeniable sense of urgency. However, at best, it’s a gamble as it may cause you to overlook a more beneficial, successful path.

Finding that best path often requires choosing roles that align with both your professional abilities and personal well-being. Self-assessment provides clarity on the types of work environments where you’re most likely to thrive.

A thorough self-assessment enables you to better understand your strengths, helping you build confidence and maintain motivation during the career transition process. By identifying your core skills, interests and values, you’ll be better equipped to explore jobs that are both meaningful and sustainable.

Melissa’s Story: A Journey Back To Work

To better understand the process, we’ll follow Melissa.

Melissa is 48 and living in Akron, Ohio. She is divorced, has two adult children and until a year ago, had been a middle-school teacher for 23 years.

Then, Melissa fell from a ladder and experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI), rendering her unable to continue teaching.

After some effort and a lot of time, she got approved for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) with the help of a disability representative. She also had some savings and smaller insurance policies that helped hold her over, and her two daughters (living out of state with their own families) have been able to supplement here and there.

Being out of work caused Melissa to feel isolated because she’s on her own most of the time and like she’s lost her purpose. Melissa is also anxious about an unclear financial future. However, during that first year, Melissa worked hard on physical therapy and thought a lot about whether she could be ready to go back to work.

While the physical aspects of teaching are still too much for her, Melissa feels strongly (as do her newfound friends in her online TBI support group) that she can return to work doing something else – but what?

Exploring Your Traits, Skills And Experience

To get a total view of your career potential, it’s essential to evaluate several aspects of yourself, including personal traits, skills and past work experiences.

Understanding Your Personal Traits

Your personal traits often influence how you work, communicate and respond to different environments. Understanding these traits can help you find roles that align with your natural tendencies.

Taking a personality assessment, such as the Strong Interest Inventory, can be an excellent way to gain insight into your preferred working style. These assessments provide a deeper understanding of how you interact with others, process information and manage tasks.

Melissa’s Journey: Melissa recalls working as a manager for a friend’s family restaurant for four years (before she finished her teaching certificate). It was a small but incredibly busy diner which required her to wear many hats and constantly switch roles. During her time there, the family had difficulty keeping other managers. But Melissa had staying power and was focused, organized and productive while having fun. From that experience, Melissa realizes she has a strong ability to adapt to changing circumstances – a useful trait given the right conditions.

Consider what values and motivators are central to your sense of fulfillment. Do you thrive in roles where you can help others, solve complex problems or create something new?

Melissa’s Journey: In her roles as a teacher and restaurant manager (plus being a server before then), she understands she has a strong desire to help others. She notices this is a specific motivation that remains top-of-mind for her.

Reflect on the activities and interests you gravitate toward, both inside and outside of work. These often indicate areas where you’ll find satisfaction and motivation. Interests often correlate with specific job types.

Melissa’s Journey: During her recovery, Melissa found innovative solutions to everyday challenges, such as reorganizing her home for accessibility and creating visual aids to help with memory. She kept noticing how much it felt like being in the classroom and realized it was because she used the same creative thinking skills. She realizes this interest in creative problem-solving reflects her natural curiosity and determination to overcome obstacles in practical and meaningful ways. She also senses this is a big driver for her.

Taking Stock Of Your Skills

Your skills—both technical (hard skills) and interpersonal (soft skills)—play a significant role in determining the types of roles you might like to pursue.

Start by listing your hard skills, which are your technical abilities and knowledge-based skills. Next, identify your soft skills, such as communication or teamwork. Together, these skills create a complete picture of your professional capabilities.

Rate your proficiency level for each skill on a scale of 1 to 5, considering your strengths and areas where you feel confident. This helps understand which skills are solid assets and which you may need to improve. Compare your current skills with the requirements of potential new roles to identify any gaps. Bridging these gaps can be done through training, online courses or even volunteering.

Melissa’s Journey: When Melissa lists her hard skills, data management winds up scoring pretty low while writing and public speaking are high. For soft skills, she is the most advanced in things like empathy and teamwork. She remembers recently considering some ads about data entry jobs, yet now realizes that might not work out very well.

Uncovering The Treasure In Your Experience

Think about former roles and work environments where you felt most energized and fulfilled. What aspects of these roles made them enjoyable? Was it the structure, the independence or the collaborative nature? Identifying these characteristics can guide you toward environments that will aid to your success.

List out specific accomplishments and situations where you demonstrated your abilities. For example, if you streamlined a process that saved time and resources, this highlights both analytical and efficiency-oriented skills.

Your energy level across tasks can make a big difference in performance and personal satisfaction. Certain tasks may have left you feeling energized, while others were draining. Noting these differences can help you avoid roles with the same challenges.

Melissa’s Journey: Melissa realizes she enjoyed her restaurant roles so much because those jobs involved maintaining strong momentum across many diverse tasks. She notices she carried that over into the classroom, rotating the students through a flow of differently paced, diverse activities to keep them engaged and upbeat. She sees how variety and high pace are important to her.

Self-Assessment Tools And Methods

To help you in this process, there are several professional tools and exercises you can use to gain a clearer perspective on your career path.

Professional Tools

Tools like the Strong Interest Inventory and CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder) are designed to uncover career matches based on your interests and strengths. These assessments not only give you a list of possible career paths but also help validate your strengths.

Values assessments such as the PVA from Barret Values Centre help you understand your work priorities, while skills assessments focus on your competencies. Together, these tools provide a comprehensive view of your professional identity, guiding you to roles that align with both your skills and your values.

Self-Reflection Exercises

Creating a T-chart comparing your skills with job requirements can help you visualize how your skills align with job demands. This simple exercise can clarify which roles you are most qualified for and highlight any areas needing improvement.

Performing a personal SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) provides a structured approach to evaluating your professional attributes. By identifying these factors, you can better understand where you excel and what barriers you may need to overcome.

Creating a timeline or career map can reveal trends in your career development. This exercise can highlight which experiences have been most impactful and guide you in choosing a new direction.

Feedback From Others

Reach out to mentors, former supervisors, or colleagues for feedback on your strengths and potential career paths. Their insights can offer a broader view of your capabilities and areas where you can excel.

Professional networking in your fields of interest can give you realistic insights into potential roles and expectations. These connections may provide mentorship and open doors to new opportunities.

Working with a vocational expert from AES can provide you with professional guidance on your career journey. AES experts are often well-versed in assessment tools and can offer tailored advice on making a career transition.

Creating A Career Transition Plan

Once you have a clear understanding of your strengths and potential areas for growth, it’s time to create an actionable plan for transitioning into a new role.

1. Setting clear career goals: Define what you want to achieve in your new career. Setting specific, measurable goals can keep you focused on the best job opportunities for you.
2. Identifying skill and knowledge gaps: Based on your self-assessment, pinpoint the gaps between your current abilities and the requirements for your desired roles. Addressing these gaps can make you more competitive.
3. Developing a skills-building plan: Outline a plan for developing any necessary skills through courses, workshops or certifications. Tracking your progress will keep you motivated.
4. Monitoring progress and adjusting as needed: Regularly evaluate your progress and adjust your plan as your goals evolve.

Melissa Moves Forward

After taking stock of herself, speaking with former colleagues, connecting with her friend’s family (over a slice of pie she still goes back for every few weeks), and engaging with a vocational expert from AES, Melissa figured out her path forward and took a leap.

AES helped her register with Social Security’s Ticket To Work Program, providing assistance and protecting her benefits to support her return to work. She focused her job search on roles well-suited to her skills and, with AES’ help in interview preparation, secured a position as a development coordinator for a company that provides professional training to teachers.

In her new role, Melissa works on different training courses every few days, with her team delivering finished modules quickly as the company continues to expand into new areas. She finds great alignment between her traits, skills, and experience and was able to secure accommodations for her disability through the human resources team.

What started as a hope to regain employment turned into a surprise—Melissa loves what she does again. Like Melissa, you can find your new path by putting in effort and taking advantage of professional help from a vocational expert, uncovering your strengths, abilities and skills to lay the groundwork for a successful career transition and possibly discovering your best role yet.

Forging A New Career Path With Allsup Employment Services

Are you currently receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and would like to return to work?

Allsup Employment Services (AES) is an SSA-authorized EN for the Ticket To Work Program. We have over 10 years of experience helping thousands return to work successfully.

The Ticket to Work Program helps you protect your SSA disability benefits by:

• Maintaining your SSDI income while you attempt working again.
• Safeguarding your Medicare coverage.
• Pausing SSA medical disability reviews.

Benefits Of Working With AES:

• Earn More. Make as much income as you choose during the Trial Work Period and protect your full SSDI benefits.
• Stress Less. Avoid medical disability reviews and the worry that comes with them.
• Keep Medicare. While working, you can keep Medicare for over seven years.
• Avoid Risk. If you stop working anytime within five years, your SSDI benefits can resume through a reinstatement process.
• Pay Nothing. As a Social Security-authorized Employment Network, our services are provided at no cost.

Choosing AES means working with an EN who’s focused on your goals and will work with you every step of the way.

Get started – With No Cost And No Obligation.

Connect with Allsup Employment Services today by calling 866-540-5105 or requesting a call.