When it comes to career personality tests, it’s usually different than tests we take at school.
Why? Because career personality tests are for specific and sometimes, unexpected details about ourselves.
Using this information, students, graduates and experienced professionals can identify what career opportunities are best suited for them, based on their personality.
For career personality tests, it is essential to note how results can be used to make appropriate career decisions.
What is a career personality test?
Career personality or career aptitude tests pose a series of behavioural type questions. Different scenarios would be presented. Candidates would be questioned about responding to these situations and the outcome will be examined.
Other tests provide multiple-choice responses to choose. Based on the choice a candidate selects, these answers would be complied and evaluated as to your personality, skills, competencies, suitable career options and other professional details. Career personality tests work to identify what will be a suitable career fit based on who you are and what you do well.
What is the best career personality test?
The best career aptitude test can be subjective. Regardless, when choosing a suitable career test, it is critical that it provides specific insights into your capabilities and character. These specific insights should be easy to interpret, accurate yet offer detailed recommendations as to career opportunities to pursue, given your strengths and weaknesses.
Examples of career personality tests
Some of the well-known career tests include:
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator – evaluates your personality and choice of career based on Extraversion vs. Introversion, Sensing vs. Intuition, Thinking vs. Feeling and Judgment vs. Perception.
- The Big-Five Personality Test – How do you work and communicate with others. Independent worker vs. Team player?
- DISC Assessment – Evaluates emotional intelligence through four personality traits – Dominance, Influence, Submission & Compliance.
- MAPP (Motivational Appraisal Personal Potential) Career Assessment Test – Used by job seekers, career coaches, recruitment agencies, corporate firms and employed workers. Test results indicate what job opportunities are the best for a candidate and offers the skills, education and even current job openings.
How do career tests work?
Career personality tests can be taken online or be administered through a career counsellor. Potential employees usually take an aptitude or psychometric tests as part of their interview process. These types of career tests are usually handled by a certified administrator. Candidates are usually given a time frame to complete questions, after which the administrator collects their results and groups them into various categories based on their responses.
Companies use these tests for specific job functions where personality and soft skills are just as important, if not more, than having the educational background. They assist companies to match the right candidate with the right job. Jobs within customer service, sales, hospitality, administration and healthcare for example, require persons to have certain personality traits to ensure the comfort and satisfaction of clients or patients.
What are factors a career test may cover?
Career personality tests cover:
Aptitude
Your aptitude is your ability to do the job. Employers want to know, through aptitude testing that this candidate is not only qualified according to a tertiary institution, but has the necessary hard and soft skills to perform. Aptitude also indicates to an employer if a candidate is flexible and teachable to learn these skills, once they are hired.
Career lists
This is your career direction. Based on the responses you’ve provided; these career lists would be the best jobs suitable for you.
Career Inventory
Career personality tests specifically suggest the managerial capacity you can perform. For example, you can make a great sales executive or customer service representative, but you’re not quite ready to be a sales manager or a client relationship manager.
Career Personality
Your career personality indicates the traits, characteristics, beliefs, values, and lifestyle that make up who you are. Using this information, the career personality test then connects your personality to suitable career options.
How do I choose a career test?
When taking a career aptitude test, is it essential that it is:
- Comprehensive – evaluates multiple facets of your personality, ambitions, values and goals.
- Reputable – choose personality tests that are reputable or used by employers. This gives validation to your results and illustrates how a potential employer may classify you.
- User-friendly – Taking a career personality test should be easy to navigate, interpret and even fun.
- Provides new and relevant knowledge – You don’t want to waste your time taking an assessment only to find our information you already know. A reliable and valid career personality test ought to provide new and usable information in terms of character insights and career recommendations so that you can make appropriate decisions.
- Customised – Skip the generic categorical assessments and choose a career personality test that is customised, actionable and speaks to only you.
Are career tests accurate?
No test is 100% perfect. There are other factors to consider when choosing a career path. Just because you have an interest in a particular field does not necessarily mean you will be good at it.
Having an outgoing personality is good, but that does not automatically mean you will make a great salesperson. Therefore, regard career assessments as a starting point. You may find the career of your dreams from there, or you may discover that like many people, you career ambitions and goals tend to change as you grow older. Case in point, a career personality test you take today may be different from one taken ten years ago.
How can a career test help?
If you are a recently graduated job seeker, career tests provide a suitable and tailored starting point to decide what you want to do in your career. They are particularly helpful for candidates who are unsure as to their career interests or goals. Taking a test provides a sense of direction and recommendations based on the strengths of the candidate.
Career personality tests also provide a sense of self-awareness. To have a rewarding career, it is essential to know who you are, what drives you and what skills you possess to use for success. Very often, taking career personality tests provides these answers and opens a world of fulfilling career possibilities. This helps professionals who may have lacked self-awareness and are applying for any job, just for an income.
