Career Development: Aptitude and Personality Testing
It can be helpful to take some various tests that can give you some insights about yourself - and about other people with whom you might work – and how you work in various situations. These can enable you to more confidently and comfortably set a direction, manage a situation, or develop some aspect of your capabilities. Some examples of these tests include: Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Career Strengths Test, and the MAPP Career Assessment Test, but there are many more. Taking aptitude and personality tests can help inform you of your personal tendencies to help inform your decisions about what career development activities to undertake.
This is the third of a series of four articles on the subject of career development, where we explore key influencers to inform better decisions about developing your skills and capabilities in your career. This article, Part 3 in the series, considers Aptitude and Personality Testing as inputs for making career choices, and as influencers on career development decisions. Part 1 looks at the question of a Highly or Loosely Structured Approach as a preference of work style or type of work environment. Part 2 looks at Hard Skills and Soft Skills in terms of preferences and tendencies, acknowledging that you need both to succeed. Finally, Part 4, Stage of Career, dives into the specific career development challenges unique to early, mid, or late career stages.
Here are some key career considerations that can be informed by the various forms of career testing:
- Core skills required – It’s important to think about the core skills required to be in an organization. An engineering organization is different in many ways from a healthcare organization or an advertising consulting firm. Tests can help provide you with some insight on the types of organizations where you might best fit.
- Personality types – In general, the world turns on the variety of personalities that we people have. Organizations are the same, but they work better when they are able to optimize on this. Leaders and followers are needed – and they are not necessarily the same people in those same roles in every situation. Tests can point to areas where you can be an effective leader…and other areas where you can be an effective performer.
- Type of thinking – We all know that there are some people we can relate to easily…and others that are nearly impossible to relate to. This relates, in part, to the ‘type of thinking’ – the things that a person thinks about, range of opinions, and perspective in the world. You come as who you are now…and can develop that by your experiences over time. Testing can help establish where you are in your thinking today…and perhaps where you’d like to go.
- Communication style
- Values – Values are at the core of what you do…and are embedded in the aspects of passion, purpose, and possibility that form the motivators for us as individuals, and for teams and organizations. Career testing can help you to clarify and highlight your values and help you to identify where you might find congruency…or incongruency.
What areas need attention in your organization to help facilitate effective strategy implementation in business?
This Post is Part of the Series: Career Development
Here is a series of four articles that focus on the subject of career development.
Career Development: Highly or Loosely Structured Approach
Career Development: Hard Skills and Soft Skills
Career Development: Aptitude and Personality Testing
Career Development: Stage of Career
