Career Peace

If you’re considering a career change, you’ve probably seen ads for free career tests. These are standardized, multiple choice tests that ask you a series of questions about specific things you like and/or dislike. There are no right or wrong answers. When you’re finished, they’ll give you your career assessment results.

The results run the gamut of helpfulness. Some say “you’re an ISFE” or a “Driver-Analytical.” I’ve even seen one that says “you’re a green.” Ooookay.

What Career Tests Really Measure

What’s really going on here has to do with the way people who have gone before you answered those same questions.

The testing service essentially compares your answer choices with large groups of people who answered those questions more or less the same way you did. The idea here is if your answers match those who have a meticulous eye for detail, then they’ll label you “analytical.”

On the other hand, if your answer choices indicate that you’re more aligned with quiet, pleasant personalities, they might label you as an “amiable.” You get the idea.

Then they compare job descriptions (all of which are catalogued) with people who have held those jobs in the past. If most “analyticals” have done well as computer programmers (and they have, by the way), then you should be happy working as a computer programmer. Or that’s the theory, anyway.

Theory Doesn’t Always Hold Water

Does this theory work? Sometimes. But other times not. It all depends on the individual.

Career Tests serve as a starting point. And not a bad one, either. Especially if you’re just coming out of school or are in the middle of your working life and haven’t really discovered anything you like doing yet (don’t feel badly if you’re in the second category - you’ve got a lot of company there).

But you regardless of your career test results, keep this in mind. The questionnaire recommends career directions based on other people who answered those questions the same way. If I can coin a term from Survivor, this only tells you what “tribe” you belong to.

What no career test can measure is YOU. It’s okay to say that you’re like a certain group of people is a number of respects. But not in others. Chances are the career advice those test scores give might have some job choices on them that you wouldn’t like at all.

I’m a Real Life Example…

I know that certainly was the case for me. In 1992, I tested out to be an “analytical.” Based on that, I should have been perfectly happy with a career in accounting. I wasn’t. I hated it. But as a computer programmer - totally different story. I’ve been writing computer code since 1995, and have been there pretty much ever since.

What was the difference? I have a lot of creative juices that I like using in my job. Accounting doesn’t allow for that. On the contrary, creative accountants go to jail!

Programmers, on the other hand, have to find creative solutions to problems to technical problems - some of which other programmers have never found before. That was exciting to me. But somebody who loves accounting might not be able to deal with that level of uncertainty. YetAgain, you just never know.

My point is, you can’t blindly go by what a career test tells you. It’s a good starting point, but it can never measure the one thing that will make you happy as you change careers: You.

Tags: Career Advice, Career Change