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Job seekers must be able to articulate their skills and abilities, temperament and preferred work style, passions and values, motivations and goals, and accomplishments and knowledge base in order to interview successfully and land not just a job, but the right job. Armed with a comprehensive understanding of what you can do as well as how you process information, solve problems, make decisions, and communicate, you’ll be able to target positions where you can be the most productive, effective, and satisfied.
There is a variety of self-assessment tools designed to help increase your understanding of yourself. While no one test is going to provide you with all the answers to guarantee career success, any one of the tests described below, in conjunction with a trained career counselor, can provide useful insights to help you design a focused but flexible career plan that begins with finding a job in a tough economy.
The best strategy for directing the course of your career is focusing on your skills and abilities. Jobs are joint ventures in problem solving. The idea is to find a match between an employer’s needs and your ability and skill sets. Two basic questions apply to every career (and thus every career plan): (1) What needs to be done? and (2) What can you do?
Recognize that there is an important distinction between skills and abilities. A true ability is demonstrated when a particular task comes easily, quickly, and effortlessly; it is the way a person is “hardwired.” Skills, on the other hand, are learned through training, practice, and experience. Knowing your natural abilities can help steer you toward tasks and roles that use your best talents and steer you away from tasks that would be difficult and unfulfilling for you to learn. Many smart people acquire and employ skills that play against their natural abilities and become quite successful in doing so. Yet they are never completely satisfied. Similarly, if you don’t have an opportunity to use your natural abilities in your job, you may become frustrated in your work.
One self-assessment tool that objectively measuring innate abilities is offered by the Highlands Ability Battery (www.highlandsco.com). Based on the work of research scientist Johnson O’Connor, this online assessment tool uses 19 different timed work samples to measure the speed with which a person is able to perform a particular series of tasks. The scores, shown together on a personal profile and bar chart, reveal patterns or “clusters” of abilities that highlight your natural gifts and talents in relationship to how you learn, how you solve problems, how you communicate, and even which type of work environment best suits you. A certified provider provides a skilled analysis of the written report and helps individuals explore the best career options based on their natural abilities.
In addition to knowing what you can do, choosing the right career path also requires insight into your personality. Understanding your temperament will enable you to select an environment compatible with your preferred work style.
For example, introverts and extroverts thrive in different types of environments. Introverts are often quiet and reflective. They like to have time to process information before articulating their thoughts. They like a more stable, consistent work environment. Extroverts get their energy through external events and other people, so they generally like a faster-paced environment. They tend to think “out loud” and enjoy lots of interaction as well as variety in their tasks. An extrovert forced to sit in a library alone all day would be unhappy (and ultimately unsuccessful) just as an introvert forced to interact with others all day would be unhappy. Of course, some people fall in the middle of the introvert-extrovert scale and find they need a workplace that provides a combination of such activities.
Knowing where you fall on this scale will enable you to consider what types of bosses, colleagues, clients, and subordinates you work well with and in what environment you are likely to feel most comfortable. You also need to understand which of the following you prefer:
Several self-assessment tools can help you determine your temperament and preferred work style. The Highlands Ability Battery sheds light on these differences and measures your innate abilities.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is based on the theory that individuals are either born with, or develop, certain preferred ways of thinking and acting. By examining your responses to a series of questions, the MBTI defines 16 possible psychological types. These combinations indicate your preferences for the following:
This test is offered online (www.mbticomplete.com) without the assistance of a qualified counselor or can be administered through a qualified MBTI career counselor who will help interpret the results.
The DiSC Sort, offered online (www.disctests.com), classifies four aspects of behavior by testing a person’s preferences in word associations. DiSC is an acronym for the terms below:
Both MBTI and DiSC provide an individualized written report. While you don’t need a certified career counselor to interpret the results, someone trained in interpreting these tools would be extremely useful in terms of guiding you toward the practical application of the information on designing your career plan. Check with your career development or local unemployment office to see if anyone on staff is certified in these instruments.
The online Self-Directed Search (SDS) (www.self-directed-search.com) provides an individualized interpretive report describing what you like—your favorite activities and interests—as well as information about potentially satisfying occupations. The SDS was developed by Dr. John Holland, whose theory of careers is the basis for most of the career inventories used today. According to Dr. Holland’s theory, people are most satisfied in their careers when they are surrounded by people with similar interests because it creates a work environment that suits their personalities People are more comfortable and ultimately more successful in a work environment that rewards the traits and behaviors that come most naturally to them. Holland’s theory states that most people can be loosely categorized with respect to six types:
Occupations and work environments can also be classified by the same categories. The interpretive report provides a list of career options that match your results. Use the Self-Directed Search to identify job titles in which you may have an interest in conjunction with the other assessment tools described to find the type of work environment for which you are best suited. No matter which of these assessment tools you choose to take, it is helpful to work with a career counselor to help you interpret the results and make such determinations.
Self-assessment takes time, energy, and commitment. But without it, you are leaving your career satisfaction to chance. Use self-assessment tools like the insightful MBTI or DiSC Sort to help you define your temperament or the Self-Directed Search to match your interests to suitable job titles or the comprehensive Highlands Ability Battery to help you identify your natural abilities and preferred work roles and environment. Then create a career path to suit who you are at your natural best.
This well written article outlines some of the self assessment instruments available to job seekers and career changers. These instruments can provide lots of clues as to where a job seeker should begin their research. I've never yet (in a 35 year career in careers) had a single person take them and say, "Now I know the job/s I want." People usually take instruments because they want to shorten the time spent in self-analysis. A bad move given that each job hunter or career changer must know what they have to sell.
My second problem with these instruments is that they are not universally available and some can be quite pricey--e.g. the Highlands Ability Battery which can run between $600 and $1000.
My third problem with these instruments is that people can become dependent on them. If a college grad or newly minted MBA uses such instruments early in their career, they may not feel they can job search again without them. In a time when knowing how to get the best job one can in any job market is a survival skill, such dependence can be debilitating.
No matter what self-assessment instruments our clients request, or we routinely use, we owe it to them to give them an overarching process that they can use time and time again. I like this one:
What are your skills, abilities and favorite interests?
What jobs use those skills, etc.?
Where can you find those jobs?
How can you get hired for one of those jobs?
What employers need workers who know what you know?
What employers need workers who can do what you do?
You are absolutely correct. Any self-assessment tool is just a tool. The information gained from them is meant to be a starting point to begin to explore career options and help formulate an effective job search action plan. As a counselor, these instruments help me help my clients better because I have more insight into them then I might get based simply on what they tell me.
As for cost, some of them are expensive. The Highlands is not as pricey as you indicate. If ordered through http://www.highlandsco.com, it is only $350. Some affiliates may charge more, but typically they do so because they provide additional services.
Reading from reliable sources spark creative energy to continue on insight instead of surface choices. Thanks a lot.