Welcome to Mosaic‘s feature with specialist contributions from School entrance tests and Rob Williams Assessment, STEM career coaching.
IF YOU’RE EVALUATING your skillset and trying to figure out the type of job you’d excel at, there are a variety of career guidance personality tests that could point the way toward a new path. These are tests that take into account the type of person you are, assessing your strengths, weaknesses and passions by asking you a slew of questions to help you decide what the right job is for you.
Why Take a Career Guidance Test on Personality?
Career personality tests, also called career assessment tests, can be thought-provoking. Even if you think you know what you want to do with your career, a personality or assessment test may show some gaps in your knowledge or an area where you could benefit from additional training. Plus, taking a personality assessment test may provide additional insight into other fields that may be of interest, based on your talent, skills and individual traits.
So, if you’re looking for career guidance, consider these types of career guidance tests:
- IQ tests.
- Career Inventories.
- Personality tests.
- Aptitude tests.
- Career tests.
Personality Tests
Psychological and personality tests analyze your personal qualities, strengths and weaknesses. The answers you provide to these types of questions can help you assess your ideal working style.
Based on your personality, preferences and patterns, you’ll discover the types of professions you’re best suited for. You will find plenty of aptitude test practice and aptitude test tips on this website.
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Aptitude Tests
Aptitude tests give one a sense of how good of a fit you are to perform certain tasks – or how likely you are to learn a skill. You will find plenty of aptitude test practice and aptitude test tips on this website.
Career Strengths Tests
Focusing more on your career skills, this test has a lot to offer. Instead of boring questions about work habits, this test dives deep into how strong you are in a variety of job-related areas.
Leadership, inductive reasoning and structural visualization are all facets in which you’ll be measured. After you’ve taken the test, you’ll see which skills you excel in.
Once you get the results, a host of jobs will pop up that include all the major skills in which you’ve excelled. It’s a great test that may even surprise you with the skills you never knew you had.
Career Guidance using Big Five Personality Tests
Do you work well with others? If you’ve ever thought about this skill and want to know how well you execute it, then this personality test is for you. Big Five personality tests focus on how you work and how well you communicate with others. While it’s a tightly focused test, its results shouldn’t be scoffed at. It gives you insight into whether you should be in a job that has you communicating with others all the time or a loner that gets the job done by yourself.
Career guidance service
Either way, this is a fantastic personality/career test.
Big Five Careers Guidance
How the Big Five personality measures can be used to match people to specific careers.
High Openness
Researcher. This seems an obvious choice for people who are creative and abstract thinkers, signature characteristics of the High Openness person.
High Caution
Psychometric designer of intelligence, personality, and aptitude tests.
Extraversion (high)
Any sales role; public relations; teaching.
Introversion (high)
Writer, scientist.
Agreeableness (high)
Any human resources or customer services role.
Agreeableness (low)
Any job requiring a tough-minded approach, such as a management consultant.
Emotional Stability (high)
Any high-stress job, such as a clinical psychologist or the headteacher.
Emotional Sensitivity (high)
- Therapist
- Career counsellor
- Life coach.
Career guidance service
Career Guidance using Enneagram Types
Once you answer the questions, you may fall into a variety of categories. You may be classified as a reformer, an enthusiast or even an achiever.
One of the cool things this test tells you is how you work with co-workers. Better yet, it shows you how to improve in certain areas where you may have scored low.
Overall, this test offers a lot. It’s one of the only tests that try to help you improve areas that you score low in.
1. Discover What You Truly Enjoy
The last thing you want is to go through the process of switching careers just to get into an industry you don’t like.
List your likes, dislikes, values and interests. Identify exactly what it is about your current job that’s making you want to leave — and make sure to avoid career paths that could have the same obstacles.
For some people, this could be the toughest step. Figuring out what you truly enjoy and are passionate about after ignoring it for years isn’t a simple task.
Ask yourself, “What do I get excited about doing?” or “What’s something I spend my free time thinking about or doing?” Choose a career related to your answers to those questions.
Career guidance service
2. List Careers That Satisfy Your Passions
Once you’ve keyed in on some of your passions and interests, search for careers that would encompass those things.
For example, if you spend a lot of your time thinking about or hanging out with your dog, consider a career that has to do with animals.
The important part about this step is keeping your skills in mind, as well. Just because you like dogs doesn’t mean you have the expertise or skills required to be a veterinarian.
However, if your skills include marketing, writing and designing, you could consider working as a marketing specialist for an animal protection agency or dog kennel.
The trick is to combine your skills with your passion to create your ideal position and go from there.
3. Research the Careers That Made Your List
Once you’ve come up with your list of dream careers, start researching. The bigger the industry change you’re making, the more research you should do. If you want to make a worthwhile, informed decision, this might be the most important step.
Think about the years of research and education you had before going into your current position — can you imagine how difficult it would’ve been to adjust without all that information?
Set yourself up for success by learning as much as you can before you start applying to jobs.
4. Make the Decision
You’ve brainstormed your interests, listed careers that relate to them and researched them all — now it’s time to decide.
Making a decision is important because it will frame the way the rest of your career change process goes. You need to pinpoint a specific industry or career you’re trying to break into in order to achieve that goal.
Career guidance service
5. Develop an Action Plan
Once you’ve decided on the path you’re going to take next, develop a specific plan with measurable goals, action items and a timeline.
There are probably new skills you need to learn, and professionals you should meet and work to wrap up at your current job. You might even have a few personal goals you’d like to work on while making this shift.
Leaping from career to career isn’t a casual move — you don’t want to take it lightly. The more detailed your plan is, the better chance you’ll have at finding your dream job quickly.
6. Adjust Your Personal Brand
When you hand someone your business card or invite them to check out your online portfolio, they should be able to tell which industry you belong to now — not your past field.
This step includes adjusting your resume, cover letter and portfolio as much as possible so potential employers know you’re all in. When you edit your own professional brand to be more related to the new industry, they’ll see your dedication in that aspect.
You can consider creating a functional or skills-based resume using Resumonk. Highlight what transferable skills you have learnt in your previous profession and how they apply to the new industry.
7. Start Networking in Your Desired Field
In any career field, it’s not only about what you know, it’s also about who you know.
Start attending networking events for your industry and meeting as many people as you can. Introduce yourself and say you’re starting to break into the field now.
This is a great opportunity to ask seasoned professionals for their tips or advice on how to get into the industry and be successful — people love talking about themselves, their stories and their success, so they’ll remember you for asking.
8. Update Your Training
As you learn more about your new field, you might discover you need to significantly broaden your horizons.
Start slowly, taking only a course or two at a time. Not only will this be difficult to juggle with your current position, but it’ll also help you confirm you’re truly interested in the field.
If it’s not required to get a job in the field, you might not feel the need to get a new degree or certification for your career switch — that’s OK. Taking a few courses could be enough to give you the jump-start you need and catch you up to people who’ve been in the field for years.
9. Find a Mentor
While you’re making this transition, you’re going to be stressed and uncertain at times. A mentor can help keep you on track and remind you of the bigger picture.
They don’t have to be an incredibly successful, rich or powerful person to be an adequate guide for you during this time. However, it certainly wouldn’t hurt if they’re experienced in your new industry.
10. Begin the Job Hunt
Recall all those skills you learned about job hunting during your senior year of college. Dig out your cover letter templates, interviewing tips and negotiation strategies.
Remember the importance of researching companies thoroughly before applying, interviewing and especially before accepting a position.
It’s also important to remember that the job hunt is truly a hunt — it’s not going to happen overnight. Try not to think about it too much and trust that the right position for you will come along.
11. Continue Learning About Your New Field
To keep yourself distracted while you wait to hear back from the seemingly endless amount of applications you’ve filled out, keep learning about your new career.
As we mentioned earlier, knowledge is power when it comes to breaking into a new industry. The more you know going into your new job, the less you’ll have to adjust to on that first day.
Graduate Top Skills 2020
1. Emotional intelligence
Organizations have been looking for people who are emotionally intelligent for quite some time, but it’s becoming more and more important. What is emotional intelligence? It’s our ability to understand and express our own emotions, as well as understand someone else’s emotions. Developing emotional intelligence (EQ) is something everyone should be focusing on.
2. Creativity
As humans, we have this amazing ability to be creative, imaginative, and invent new things. Creativity boosts innovation, which results in economic growth. It’s fresh thinking that will give companies a competitive advantage so every company will want creative employees in the future. If your company employs people who can figure out how to do things nobody else is doing, it will stand out. It’s important to realize that creativity isn’t the sole skill of artists. Creativity can be improved and fostered in anyone’s life.
3. Flexibility and adaptability
What we’re currently seeing is fewer and fewer skills and jobs for life. Therefore, we need to constantly adapt and learn new things. In fact, the half-life of skills is reducing at a drastic rate. What we’ve learned today will be out of date in two or three years’ time. Everyone will need to build their flexibility and adaptability skills, so they are prepared to update their skills every few years and accept new ways of doing things.
Holland Career Preferences
Firstly, occupational preferences refer to the individual interests and motivation — what the person really enjoys doing is matched with what the job actually involves and what the person will spend the majority of time doing.
Secondly, occupational preferences are matched with what the job actually involves and what the person will spend the majority of time doing. The most known theory is that of Holland (1985).
Holland suggested matching between six major types of personality and occupations:
- Realistic: an outdoor type. Prefers physical, mechanical and systematic jobs. E.g., toolmaker, mechanic.
- Investigative: analytical and curious jobs. E.g., research, chemist, physical scientist.
- Artistic: imaginative type. Prefers expressive and non-conforming jobs. E.g., designer.
- Social: training and helping jobs. E.g., social-worker, teachers, and personnel.
- Enterprising: goal-directed and socially manipulative jobs. E.g., managerial.
- Conventional: data and information manipulative jobs. E.g., clerical, accountancy.
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HOLLAND Part II
Holland suggests that a person should be described in terms of three types that resemble the most, and the order in which these three traits appear. This ends up with twenty-four personality types. For example, an ESI type is described best as enterprising, with strong social tendencies and minor intellectual tendencies. A typical career for an ESI person is a manager of a retail store.
The six types can be represented in a hexagonal model. The six categories are ordered so that those with the highest correlations are adjutant to each other; the correlations of pairs of categories opposite each other, are generally the lowest.
A large volume of research examined Holland’s theory. Although there is strong support to its psychometric model, the theory’s predictions of choice and change in the real world remain in doubt. There is strong evidence that vocational choices are related to personality profiles; furthermore, there is also evidence that matching is correlated with satisfaction and success. Yet, some researchers suggested that the strong association between personality and career choice is an artefact of the occupational choice measures. Most of the studies used questionnaires to measure occupational choice, rather than examining actual occupational choice. When the actual choice was used, the support to the theory was less certain.
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Preferences Part III
The most common and comprehensive occupational preference test is the Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB); another popular test is the Kuder Preference Record (KPR). The SVIB contains 399 items and provides three sets of scores. First, it provides scores on 22 basic interest scales, such as: public speaking, law politics, business management, sales, teaching, music, and adventure. Second, it provides scores on 45 occupational scales, such as dentist, architect, army officer, carpenter, personnel manager, librarian, accountant and sales manager. Finally, it provides scores on 8 non-occupational scales, such as academic achievement, managerial orientation and occupational level.
The SVIB is probably the best occupational preference test due to the vast information it provides. The consultant needs to send the results to the SVIB centre to get a plot of the results. An easier to score test that is very useful as well is the KPR. Unlike the SVIB it doesn’t have specific occupational scales, but rather have working areas and activities scales.
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MBTI Career Guidance
Welcome to our MBTI personality test tips. Plus, our MBTI-based career guidance and resilience to stress are based on each of the MBTI personality test types.
Career Guidance using the MBTI
Big Five Careers Guidance – How the Big Five personality measures can be used to match people to specific careers.
High Openness
Researcher. This seems an obvious choice for people who are creative and abstract thinkers, signature characteristics of the High Openness person.
High Caution
Psychometric designer of intelligence, personality, and aptitude tests.
Extraversion (high)
Any sales role; public relations; teaching.
Introversion (high)
Writer, scientist.
Agreeableness (high)
Any human resources or customer services role.
Agreeableness (low)
MBTI career guidance
Any job requiring a tough-minded approach, such as a management consultant.
Emotional Stability (high)
Any high-stress job, such as a clinical psychologist or headteacher.
Emotional Sensitivity (high)
- Therapist
- Career counsellor
- Life coach.
MBTI
– Give them space and time alone to sort out their feelings.
– Validate their feelings.
– Remind them of their strengths.
– Don’t give them advice. This will only make them feel worse.
MBTI ’Dreamers’ (INFP and INFJ)
The two IN_ types which are probably the most susceptible to stress are the ‘Healer’ (INFP) and ‘Counsellor’ (INFJ). Collectively these have been termed the ‘Dreamers’.
MBTI ’Responders’ (ESTP and ESFP)
Typically, being ‘lost in the moment’ – being distracted or disorganized.
Typically, they quickly respond by re-adjusting their priorities, and hence their targets. The same applies to personal goals; earning these two MBTI types the very apt classification as the ‘responders’. Such time management responses allow them to adapt to the need to achieve a tangible outcome.
Job-specific psychometric test practice
CEB SHL Verbal and Numerical Reasoning Test Practice
Aptitude test practice books
Rob Williams’s five practice aptitude tests books are all available on Amazon:
Firstly, in our opinion, Brilliant Passing Verbal Reasoning Tests is the best aptitude test practice book for Passing Verbal Reasoning Tests.
Secondly, in our opinion, Brilliant Passing Numerical Reasoning Tests is the best aptitude test practice book for Passing Numerical Reasoning Tests.