Everyone can benefit from taking an online career assessment.
Are you a college student seeking more insight into appropriate careers that you will love?
Or a midcareer professional seeking to launch your next career stage? If you want to ensure that you will like the new direction, an assessment is the perfect tool for you.
I’m biased. I love taking career assessments. I was extremely fortunate in college to have a Career Counselor who had me take several to help me hone in on a major. During my early career, I went to a Career Coach who had me take another assessment to ensure that my choice of graduate program was right for me. It was the best money I’ve ever spent.
My favorites are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Strong Campbell Interest Inventory. I have taken both several times since college and they provided invaluable insight to guide my career at all stages. Remember, the Strong Campbell is updated frequently reflect the new careers and jobs that appear every year. That’s why taking it over the course of your career can be very enlightening.
There are other great assessments that help you honestly review a wide array of preferences from type of work, to working inside or outdoors, careers that are great for introverts and careers that are fabulous for extroverts. Below is a list of options for everyone from new college grads to working professionals to career changers.
I recently took their free online exam and found it very valuable. The best part of the free summary was the detail on the best work environment and optimal type of manager. When you are interviewing, it’s not just about the job. Job seekers focus on job title and compensation, then get in a new job and really cannot deal with their new manager or corporate culture. Career assessments help job seekers to include everything in their evaluation.
This free career aptitude test can give you insight into your career personality. Based on a characterization of your personality in terms of Holland Code personality types, you will learn what kind of work environments and occupations suit you best. The results of this career test provide you with a list of professions and occupations that fit your career personality.
This website offers the most popular careers assessments that charge a fee.
Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (CISS) via NCS Pearson
The CISS uses targeted questions and analysis to provide guidance on fit in the work world. This survey measures vocational interests and skills. Similar to traditional interest inventories, the CISS interest scales reflects an individual’s preference for occupational areas.
Career InfoNet, Occupational Profile
This service provides a customized occupational profile report, based on choices jobseekers pick in their chosen career field. Job seekers also learn the education and training needed to enter this field, plus the skills, knowledge and abilities required in the field. Finally, they can review the tasks and activities performed.
The mission of career-intelligence.com is to help women achieve career satisfaction by providing the information, support and tools they need to succeed. This site has a list of assessments available for free or for various nominal fees.
The Career Key is a free service to help with career planning, job search, and choosing a college major or training program. Jobseekers are able to take Career Key, a professional career test, to identify job skills. The Career Key measures how similar the jobseeker is to six career categories.
CareerOneStop is the U.S. Department of Labor’s website with job and career tools.
Career Test from CareerPlanner.com
The Career Test is an online self-directed assessment based on John Holland’s RIASEC model.
Focus Career and Educational Planning Solutions
This service is based on the premise that all individuals are multidimensional, each with their own unique package of occupational interests, values, skills, educational aspirations, leisure time preferences, personality, and life values. Our battery of assessments taps each of these resources to help the individual gain a better understanding of themselves and relates each of them to a unique occupation list. Individuals will be engaged in an interactive career exploration process for each of their assessment profiles and then use our unique tools to integrate and narrow down their “preferred” occupations. There is a fee.
The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is one of the most popular online personality tests, complete with analysis and descriptions of the 16 personality temperaments and lists of famous people who share the same traits. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is similar to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MTBI®). The Keirsey Temperament Sorter identifies a basic personality type, and that information can be used to direct a person into an exploration of various careers. The Keirsey measures preferences, not skills.
This website is a companion to the book Life Work Transitions.com. Chapter 2 is dedicated to skills assessment, and the site includes several different skill surveys.
MAPP – Motivational Assessment of Personal Potential
MAPP is a self-directed interest survey, similar to the Strong Interest Inventory offering a free Career Analysis designed to help identify preferences for people, things, and job content, along with suggestions on jobs that match these preferences. It is not free but offers different packages.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) instrument is the most widely used personality inventory in history. By assessing one’s personality, job seekers can find out more about career options by matching personality type with career options.
Occupational Outlook Quarterly
Published quarterly by the BLS, including an online version, this magazine features articles with practical information on jobs and careers. Topics cover a wide variety of career and work-related topics such as new and emerging occupations, training opportunities, salary trends, and results of new studies from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Occupational Information Network O*NET is a source of occupational information and the O*NET database and related products helps employers, workers, educators, and students make informed decisions about education, training, career choices, and work. The O*NET Project is administered and sponsored by the US Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration.
This website offers 225 career assessments across a variety of areas and is free.
On this site, job seekers take a free career test to discover their natural talents and interests. The test matches career choices with strengths and interests. Job seekers receive a report detailing the results of their career test, learn about motivations and preferences, and see how well these motivations and preferences match the needs of 5 jobs they selected.
The SDS, developed by John Holland, is an inventory that can help you find careers or educational programs that match your own skills and interests. This fee-based assessment tool is very well known and popular among career counselors. The SDS has been used by over 22 million people worldwide and has also been translated into 25 different languages. SDS results have been supported by over 500 research studies.
This is a free self-directed assessment which helps job seekers to build a list of skills, then identify occupations that require these skills, and identify gaps in skills and education for each occupation. Great for new entrants to the workforce, students considering potential careers or career changers.
This is a self-directed assessment from career-intelligence.com with an article and exercises to help job seekers decide what is important in looking for a career or a new employer. The assessment is free.
The Strong Interest Inventory assessment instrument reflects today’s pattern of constant change in the world of work. It provides a solid, dependable guide for career change and development. Whether for students exploring careers, clients considering a job change, or individuals interested in career development, the Strong provides the most valid, powerful, and up-to-date information to help make informed decisions. The Strong’s 317 items measure interest in a broad range of occupations, work activities, leisure activities, and school subjects.
This test measures what many psychologists consider to be the five fundamental dimensions of personality.
Thomas Kilman Conflict Mode Instrument
The TKI Inventory assesses behavior on five different dimensions: competing (the goal is to win); avoiding (the goal is to delay); compromising (the goal is to find a middle ground); collaborating (the goal is to find a win-win situation); and accommodating (the goal is to yield). Job seekers receive a personalized report, which explains the five conflict-handling styles, preferred styles and how results compare to other managers.
The Interest-Finder Quiz is a sample quiz designed to acquaint the user with a national test that is part of the ASVAB Career Exploration Program. Answers are analyzed and fit into two of the six Holland work types.
Free is good. This site offers free career assessments for different fields such as healthcare and technology.
If you have a child who is in high school and want an assessment for STEM careers, check out STEM Career Assessment. Options include:
For healthcare careers assessments, a good place to start is HealthcarePathway.com. Also try explorehealthcareers.org.