Whether you are in your final years of high school or college, you are probably concerned about your future employment prospects. While having a bachelor’s degree is certainly a fine step in narrowing down what to do for a career, not everyone has this luxury. Maybe you know that you are skilled or talented at several employable abilities but you are not sure if you can put those qualities to work. One possible angle for career advice you may not have considered would be the many online personality tests that are freely available on the internet.
Personality Tests?
Yes, but only certain kinds. Knowing the answer to quizzes that seek to pin you down as a particular character from some television series, film or book may be entertaining but they will tell you practically nothing about how to go about your career. There are a few notable personality tests that are especially useful for this sort of self-analysis.
The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
This is a test that was created by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, two writers familiar with the writings of psychoanalyst Carl Jung and inspired to break down personalities across four factors: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. People fall into one of two aspects of each of these factors, resulting in a matrix of 16 different personality types. The letters that everyone cites when explaining their results stand for Introversion/Extraversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, and Judging/Perception.
The Strong Interest Inventory (SII)
This is a test that was initially developed by Dr. Edward Kellog Strong, Jr. in 1927 with the initial goal of helping veterans find suitable employment upon reentering society. The version of the test that people take these days was revised by Jo-Ida Hansen and David P. Campbell in 2004 and intended to guide high schoolers, collegiates and adults in figuring out their strong suits for employment.
The Big Five/Five-Factor Model (FFM)
This test seeks to analyze an individual’s personality according to five factors:
- Openness (to experiences)
- Conscientiousness
- Extroversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism, a tendency to develop and dwell upon negative emotions.
Now That I Know What They Analyze, How Can I Put Them To Work for My Career?
Going through even one personality quiz can yield a great deal of information regarding which career paths will be easy and enjoyable and which may be a slog of an ordeal to pursue. If you would like more specific advice consider these points.
- Knowing what career paths best suit you means you have a much greater chance of finding work that you will agree with.
- You can learn what your strengths are, helping you go about job-hunting with a sharper, narrower focused. Having a test explicitly point out your strengths also means that you will be better equipped “What are your strengths?”, one of the most common questions asked during a job interview.
- You can discover your real weaknesses, rather than just the ones you think you may have. While concrete proof of your weaknesses can be a benefit during the job interview, that knowledge can also motivate you to focus on working through those weaknesses.
- You can figure out how you work best. Not only will this information help you find the work environment but also give you a better idea of how your productivity is affected when working with others.
- You can gain a better understanding of how you communicate to others. This can be vital information to know when you are looking to optimize and maintain relationships with employers and coworkers. It can also double as a way of figuring out what sort of aspects you need to work on-maybe you discover that you do not do well in communicating with others, possibly because you favor working around with inhuman machines; this information could help you realize that you need to work on your interpersonal skills to improve your professional standing.
By Abby Drexler, BOSS contributor
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