Career Assessment Tests:
Do Your Interest, Skills and Aptitude Match Your Job Choice?

Before you embark on college or a training program, be sure your personal values and dreams are supported by the career you are training for. Do you have the personality for the career you want? If you are already working in a profession or industry and want to advance, have you considered how your current skills and experience prepared you to advance or do you have gaps you need to fill?

Potential employers may require you to take both psychological and performance tests as condition of employment or advancement. You can avoid the disappointment of being rejected for a position or failing to succeed in a position by making sure you are training for the right career and getting the right training for that career.

There are a variety of assessment tests available online, through state or college employment offices, or through career counselors that can help you match your aptitude to a career.

Career Tests Measure Many Qualities

Assessment tests help you identify skills, abilities, and interests. You make better decisions about a career path if you understand what you like (and don’t like), as well as what you do well (and not-so-well). A test that steers you away from one kind of job or training program can also help steer you toward another.

Types of Career Tests

There are two primary kinds of career tests.

Performance tests measure how much you know, how well you read and write, how well you learn, and how skilled you are.

Assessment tests measure personal characteristics like interests, work values, and personality traits. They don’t have right or wrong answers; there is no need to study for them.


Assessment tests fall into three categories:

Interest Inventories helps you identify your interests related to the world of work. An inventory can assist you in identifying training, education, or careers with activities that you might like doing.

Work Values Instruments allow you to pinpoint what you value in jobs (such as achievement, autonomy, recognition, support, and conditions of work) and then identify occupations that share your work values and the characteristics of jobs.

Personality Measures help identify your personal style in dealing with tasks, data, and other people. An understanding of your personality helps you to make decisions about training programs, which jobs to apply for, or which career direction to take.

Go to Part 2: Online Career Assessment Test Information

 

 

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