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How many times have you wondered about finding the career you want? Or asked yourself if the career you’re in is a good fit for your personality? There are actually effective personal assessment tools out there to help match you with the career of your dreams.
Understanding your personality, strengths, interests, and values, is critical when picking or transitioning careers. It doesn’t require you to go on some soul-searching journey into the depths of your being. Actually, it can be as simple as using career assessment tools to find out what your best career matches are. Some of these tools are administered by professionals; however, they can be taken alone to get a sense of what your ideal career is.
Here are 30 career assessment tools that will come in handy when you or anyone around you asks the question: “How do I figure out the career I really want?”
One of the most popular and well-known career assessment tools out there is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This assessment describes 16 different personality traits, and identifies basic personality differences. That’s how I found out I was an introvert after many years of questioning my social skills at work.
This Values Assessment will help you learn more about what your real motivations are in your career. It will measure and rank various components of work, to help you understand which jobs or industries fit your style.
This personality assessment test measures people according to their temperament: “artisan, rational, idealist, and guardian.” If you’re ready to go through the 71 questions (yes, it’s pretty long), you’ll get more insight into how you really communicate and what your actions tend to be.
This free personality test is inspired by the Myers-Briggs test. It will help you gain insight into your type of personality as related to your ability to form and maintain relationships. The good part? It should only take about 12 minutes to take.
As its name indicates, this assessment tool divides people into five categories: openness, extraversion, agreeability, neuroticism, and openness. It helps you pinpoint your learning style, work preferences, and includes a few hilarious questions too.
With this tool, you’ll be able to rank school subjects and activities you enjoy, as well as qualities you have. Your interests are then matched to a certain career cluster to reveal what type of work is the best fit for you.
This assessment test is sponsored by the U.S Department of Labor, and will help you pinpoint your work interests. The drawback? It has a total of 60 questions, so get ready!
This career assessment is perfect if you hate your job, or are just out of school or college. While it has a free component, the paid “starter package” costs $90 to get a list of your top 20 career matches. If you want the whole enchilada, you may have to fork over $149.95 for the “executive package”, which includes a full 30-page assessment and over 900 career matches. The free test matches you to five potential careers, which is not a bad start.
This personality assessment pinpoints the area you’re the most interested in career-wise, and translates it into suitable career interests. This is also one of the longer ones, with a total of 87 questions!
This test identifies your most prevalent workplace behaviors, in order to highlight your management style. It’s also based on your primary personality traits.
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The Good&Co App
This unique app’s purpose takes you through a series of quizzes to help you uncover your personality traits and match you to your ideal career. It also helps you learn to work better with others.
This powerful test is meant to help you discover your own Enneagram type to understand your personality and the ways in which you operate. There are nine different Enneagram types, and your test results place you in one definite category.
This personality assessment, based on the Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance factors (DISC), is geared at providing insight into your communication style as well as ways to build stronger relationships with co-workers. It’s relatively quick and is composed of only 12 questions.
The Self-Directed Search categorizes people and jobs into 6 categories: realistic, investigative, social, artistic, conventional, or enterprising. It will help you narrow down the 3 types that best fit you and a list of matching careers. It costs $9.95.
This survey helps you uncover your best qualities in about 15 minutes. It’s based on a scientific assessment of character strengths to help you understand your core traits. Unlike many tests focusing on your shortcomings, the VIA survey focuses on your best qualities.
Based on a series of mind games, this career assessment tool measures your social and cognitive traits. You’ll end up with a list of your strengths and weaknesses, which can guide you towards your ideal careers.
This tool is a series of activities developed by the Johnson O’Connor Foundation for Oprah. It tests different skills and your strengths in it. The result is a list of jobs and careers which might fit you best based on your performance.
If you’re a college student, this personal assessment test is for you. It will give you an idea of what you’re already good at, and will point you to talent themes to achieve your goals. It costs $9.99.
This free Buzzfeed career quiz is not as comprehensive as the other tools in this list. Yet, it’s a quick way to gain some insight into your career match in between tasks during the day.
This personal assessment tool helps you uncover your strengths and weaknesses, how you communicate and how much value you add to any team. It’s based on a fun color game system to highlight your personality and style of interaction with others.
Dubbed as the world’s “leading behavioral style model”, this personality assessment tool’s goal is to help build more effective relationships. It has been used by thousands of organizations to improve leadership performance.
This romantically sounding tool will help you discover your own love language, so you can improve your relationships. 15 million people have already used this tool to connect better with others.
CareerHunter helps you explore your abilities and interests through 6 self-assesment tools. At the end of this very comprehensive process, you get a full career report suggesting your best career matches. It costs $9.99.
The Sokanu Career test is a free platform that takes you through some great career tests to help you discover how compatible you are with over 800 careers. It looks at five dimensions, including your workplace, personality, interests, history and career goals, to compare your test results with certain career paths’ characteristics.
This personal assessment tool highlights your work personality and ideal work environment. It guides you towards your perfect career. It also provides career research tips, as well as advice to get into the fields you’re most compatible with. Note there’s a free version as well as a paid one (the paid version is $11.99).
Renowned Psychology Today has come up with its own career assessment tool. The test contains a total of 240 questions, and matches you with one career field at the end of it. However, you can purchase the full report with more career matches.
You can find your unique career code with this career assessment tool. It’s composed of 180 true or false questions, and promises to provide you with a list of careers compatible with your interests. It’s priced at $49.95.
The Princeton Review came up with a 24-question career quiz, requiring you to pick the best answer to pinpoint your career wants. It’s relatively easy yet very revealing.
This career assessment tool takes a look at your skills and interests to help you narrow down your ideal career. It uses seven measures of ability including science, mechanical, mathematics, managerial, communication, interpersonal and artistic.
This personality assessment calculates your personal DISC profile, based on the Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance factors (DISC). It helps you build your own personality profile quickly, while analyzing your typical behavior.
What other career assessment tools would you recommend?
To Your Success,
The Corporate Sis
I took the assessment from http://www.16personalities.com and the results could not have been more accurate! It turns out that the field I am in (Accounting/Auditing) is one that people with my extremely rare personality type (“The Advocate”) will not feel fulfilled in; and I must say this is no news to me…Now, I need to take the necessary steps to transition…
Here are a few comments from my assessment results I wanted to point out (sorry for the length):
“Accounting and auditing, data analysis and routine work will leave people with the Advocate personality type fidgety and unfulfilled, and they will simply wilt under the scrutiny, criticism and pressure of courtroom prosecution and defense, corporate politics and cold-call sales…”
“Advocates are likely to find that most corporate career paths are not designed for them, but for those focused on status and material gain…”
“First and foremost, Advocates need to find meaning in their work, to know that they are helping and connecting with people…This desire to help and connect makes careers in healthcare, especially the more holistic varieties, very rewarding for Advocates – roles as counselors, psychologists, doctors, life coaches and spiritual guides are all attractive options.”
“Advocates often pursue expressive careers such as writing, elegant communicators that they are, and author many popular blogs, stories and screenplays. Music, photography, design and art are viable options too…”
“Advocate personality type are more likely to, despite their aversion to controlling others, establish their independence by either finding a leadership position, or simply starting their own practice.”
Thanks for sharing your results Huguette! These personality assessments can reveal so much about us and the right careers for us. I wish I had been given this advice when I started out in accounting too! Thanks so much for your insight!