Summary: Career assessments can help you identify jobs that would be a good fit for your personality, skill set, and interests. These assessments offer insight into career opportunities as well as help with setting goals.
Let’s be honest, who doesn’t love a good personality quiz? Finding out more about yourself can be a satisfying exercise that helps give you extra insight into what you really like and the type of environments you would most thrive in. So when it comes to matching with a well-suited career, assessments can be a great way to start. Read on for more about how to get the most out of career self-assessments—and most importantly, remember there are no wrong answers!
The Purpose of Career Assessments
Assessments use data to connect your interests, values, and abilities with careers, talent types, how you work best, and more. Measurements may include any or all of the following:
- Skills or abilities – Things you can do
- Interests – Things you like to do
- Personality – Aspects of your character, usually described by adjectives (e.g., studious, articulate, outgoing, hardworking, etc.)
- Values – The working conditions and rewards that are most important to you in a job
What Are Career Assessments
Career assessments are usually multiple-choice or true-false tests. For multiple-choice tests, you get a series of questions or scenarios to choose from a set of possible responses. Other career assessments have a series of questions that ask you to pick which activities or statements are more interesting or more characteristic of yourself. The number of questions in each test varies, and most online assessments are scored automatically.
To get the most out of career self-assessments:
- Take more than one test. Different tests will give you insight into different characteristics of yourself.
- Read up on the websites and the research or theory used to develop the test. Decide whether the website’s information seems valid to you. When you get your results, read the descriptions of all the other categories and your own.
- Keep an open mind. Before starting, don’t assume you know what you will learn from a test. Assume your first response to the prompt is the correct one for you.
- View test results as sources for your ideas and suggestions rather than instructions you must follow. Think of them more as guidelines than as actual rules.
- Combine test results with other sources of information.
How to Use Career Assessments
Many companies and educational sources offer career inventories or assessments. While many are free, there can be hidden fees. So before taking their tests, you might want to learn more about a company’s or source’s reputation. If the assessment provider seems legitimate, take notes through the assessment and save or record the results for future reference. You can take the assessment more than once or from multiple sources to see if your results are consistent.
Above all, trust your instincts. If the career results from any assessment do not seem to ring true to you, try another website or source. When taking career self-assessments, no single assessment is perfect, so it’s good to evaluate each assessment’s results with a grain of salt.
Free career self-assessment options:
- Create your account on Tallo and take the assessment now!
- Career Aptitude Test
- Skills Matcher
- O*NET Interest Profiler
Maximize Your Results
Hopefully, the career assessment results have helped you identify a list of careers that align with your skills, interests, and values. Think about the career results and how they might support your future plans. Choose several career favorites and learn more about them.
Still, wondering about your career results? A career coach, school counselor, mentor, or career advisor can offer additional guidance and resources.
