Should A Career Assessment Test Fit In Your Job-finder Toolkit?

If your career has been impacted by the recent downsizing of America"s workforce you may be thinking of adding a career assessment test to your job-finder toolkit. Let"s face it. Economists are predicting a slow recovery of job positions in vulnerable sectors. Certain job classifications we"re told will never come back at employment levels seen prior to 2008. This means that many displaced workers, which could include you, will be looking for career alternatives.

A career assessment test can help you further refine your options when considering an alternative career path. Assessments used in career counseling generally measure interests, skills, values, or personality or some combination of these. Other factors that are helpful in determining career aptitude dimensions include assessing abilities for interpersonal relating and identifying core-motivational characteristics "" what drives your ambition to succeed in a chosen career field.

It can be relatively straight forward in obtaining a measure of accurate data from respondents in a typical career assessment questionnaire. Your skills and interests for example, can be defined and qualified assuming your test answers reflect an honest self-appraisal. Applying test results in an attempt to match you up with an appropriate job opening/listing is a bit more hit-or-miss proposition.

Modern career assessment testing is built upon the foundation of the work of psychologists of the 20th century who formulated models for educational institutions and their student career guidance counselors. John L. Holland is arguably the most influential academic whose book Theory of Careers posited that "the choice of a vocation is an expression of personality". He constructed a six factor typology for categorizing major personality types which then organizes career vocations around those six distinct categories of interests.

His model has been adopted by the U.S. Department of Labor for categorizing jobs relative to interests, and to this day serves as an interpretative structure for a number of different vocational interest surveys. Later psychologists have adapted his foundational theories and may have refined the nuanced and interpretive manner in which Holland"s theory is applied in current interest inventories and job classification questionnaires.

That"s the rub in all career assessment tools. The science behind recommending and matching specific careers or job classifications with one"s personality interests remains an inexact science. Illustrative of this, is the fact that the Holland six dominant personality types are only descriptive of what could be termed a "broad match". In practice, a particular individual may possess an array of part or all interests associated with each of the six types in a descending order of preference.

The complexities and multi-dimensional characteristics of individual personalities combine in overlapping permutations. That dynamic fostered the creation of the Holland Codes which are used to describe 720 different personality patterns. How all these are then manipulated to give meaningful results that can be applied by the recipient of a career assessment test is the form"s design challenge. That"s why in practice most self-administered online tests usually rely on only two or three of the most dominant codes which are then used for vocational guidance.

It"s long been debated among career vocation counselors whether or not an online "self-directed" career interest survey can really be helpful without the assistance and interpretive guidance from a licensed or trained professional. Even though they do not require intervention to read the results, you may find you still have questions. The service offering the tool, (free or paid) may offer a way for you to follow-up for help from a counselor. Also they might try to sell you an upgrade to a premium service to obtain more comprehensive test results.

Before the advent of the interactivity of Internet 2.0, most career assessment tests were designed as tools requiring interpretive assistance. This meant your results would have to be discussed with a person licensed or trained in the particular tool being used so you could understand what the data is saying. Today, many traditional career assessment tools have been redesigned and re-formulated into more universally accessible, self-directed, online tests.

Lacking the specific guidance of a vocational counselor; an online interest inventory for instance can only aid a person focus on potential career directions. On completion, you"ll get immediate formulaic feedback. Coming with at-home convenience and privacy, the test results received are systematized patterns reflecting general orientations to the world of work, rather than specific interests in particular areas.

By the way, for those of you who require the personal coaching and enhanced interpretive assistance that real-live counseling affords, there certainly are those options too. The cost of the tool will include this service in some form at the premium price-point.

It"s instructive to note how the various schools of career theory have evolved their testing models to adapt to the modern demands of the online marketplace. The MBTI test for instance, which helps you appreciate how you interact with others and the world at large, was always thought to be far to complex to be given without interpretive assistance. Interestingly, there is now an online self-administered version recently developed in Australia.

Other test models have had varying degrees of success adapting to the online, self-directed career assessment testing approach. The TKI can help you recognize and adjust your conflict resolution styles. The Strong Interest Inventory is a tool used to help you get ahead in your current career or choose your college major.

The Simmons Career Choice Test measures work tendencies, work preferences, job-related character, personality, and interpersonal relating collectively called Emotional Intelligence (EI). Emotional Intelligence is a type of Job Aptitude that has been found in many research studies to be the single best predictor of job success and of job fulfillment.

Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., creative director, educator and associate publisher of Quintessential Careers, offers this advice when choosing a career assessment test:

"Always read the fine print. Although many companies offer a career assessment test, it's important to read the fine print when signing up to ensure your information won't be sold". She suggests looking for the following parameters to gauge the relative competency of any test advertised or offered:

"Are only limited and/or varying interpretations inherent within assessment results?
"Are credentialed names or qualifications of the developers of the assessments listed?
"Reliability and validity "" are accuracy claims given at face value or compared with standard career assessments with professional merit?