This is a short YouTube monologue by Chad Silverstein reflecting on personal and professional assessments. He values assessments for self-awareness but argues they should not define people; skills, results, and the ability to perform matter more than academic labels or credentials. He uses personal anecdotes (poor SAT/ACT performance, learning on the job selling) to illustrate that credentials can be misleading and advises focusing on skill development.
Chapters
I've done a lot of personal, professional, career assessments. I like them, I think they're cool. I think they give me a better sense of the complexity of like how I'm made up and why I do the things I do and how I think and how I take action. I mean, I absolutely love them and I'd say they don't matter so much. In many circumstances you may go against whatever your mode is, whatever you're more accustomed to doing as a result of these assessments that say who you are and label you as a certain type of individual. Whether it's personality or whether it's skill based, I don't really care. I agree. I think there is a lot of value in the self awareness and learning about yourself through assessments. But at the same time you can pretty much throw them out the door because many times you're going to be put in situations where you don't end up being and acting in a way that your assessments say that you should. And so you can't take too much stock in these things. You just have to use them as tools. And embarrassingly, I will tell you that they don't have to define who you are. When I was in high school and I took those sats and acts I did so bad it was embarrassing and I wasn't that great in school. I got by, did okay, I worked hard, but I just didn't have that gift to just be able to be book smart and I didn't care as much. And when I went to Ohio State they wasted my time with classes that didn't mean anything and teachers who just sucked. And I learned more my first day out on the road selling than I did in four years in school and, and then I ended up having a lot of people work for me who told me they were straight A students and valedictorians and had really impressive degrees which I never cared about because it was a piece of paper. So ironically, you can be really, really smart, label yourself as gifted in the classroom and then end up working for the CC student. So I think you got to be careful about your labels and putting too much emphasis on what you earn or what you're assessed as. And when push comes to shove, you know, you either step up and you do the hard work and able to produce results or you can't. And so again, I always laugh when I talk to young professionals who are out trying to get their degrees because they think that that's going to get them a job. And at the end of the day talk to any entrepreneur they need people who can actually fill the role and do the skill. And if you can do the skill, I don't care what your piece of paper says or where you graduated from, you're going to get hired if you can do it better than anyone else. So focus on your skills, focus on not putting too much emphasis on your labels. And you got to know who you are, and there's just a nice balance when it comes to being able to have assessments and then also just be able to be who you are, even if it's not what your assessments say you are.
