Anyone who takes a career assessment and expects that it will spoon fed their perfect career to them is in for a disappointment. This is not to say that career assessments are not valuable. You just need to be realistic about the type of information you will receive from it. Career assessment tools are likely to tell you what type of work environment will best suit you, what type of leadership style you possess, and what blanket career fields might be fulfilling for you.

Some of the better career assessment tools include:

1.Meyers-Briggs: This is the most commonly used career assessment tool. In this test each question has two choices. You are to select the choice that sounds closest to who you are.

There are four main categories

-How You Take in Experiences (Through your inner world) Introvert or (through your outer world) Extrovert

-How you focus on Information (through details) Sensing or (through the big picture) Intuition

-How you make decisions (using logic) Thinking or (looking at how it will affect people and circumstances) Feelings

-How do you structure your life (through organization and planning) Judging or (through spontaneity and openness) Perceiving
Your scores in each of these areas make up your matrix. Based on your matrix different career options are recommended for you. For example extraverts might be encouraged to look into customer services fields because they like a lot of interaction with other people.

2. The Holland Vocation Assessment asks you about what you like to do, learn, and create. The assessment has six main categories of career fields. They are Enterprising, Conventional, Social, Realistic, Artistic, and Investigative. It encourages people to look into careers that will allow them to incorporate the top two or three areas they scored in. If a person scored high in the Social and Artistic areas then it might suggest they look into Art Therapy as a Career because it would involve helping others and expressing creativity at the same time.

3. True Colors is a more recently developed assessment tool. For every question there are four blocks containing three words. You choose the set that describes you best, then the one that is second closest to you, and so on. The categories are broken into four colors Blue, Green, Gold, and Orange. The two colors you score highest in are your dominate colors. Blue is people focused, romantic, and balanced. Green is intellectual, assertive, and inquisitive. Gold is organized, traditional, and efficient. Orange is enterprising, impulsive, and active. You are given careers to explore based on these colors. If Gold and Green were your dominant colors it might suggest that you look into HR management since you are organized and like to take charge.

No matter what assessment you use, you are not going to get the perfect career fit delivered to you on a silver platter. Finding the right job and career field take time, experience, and research. Assessment tools can help point you in the right direction.

Learn more about this author, Paula Alexander.
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