Your Personality and Your Career Change
Many career choices don’t work out because there is a mismatch between the worker’s personal style and the demands of the job.
So if you are feeling frustrated or demotivated at work, then a review of your personality can be a great way to check the match between you and any new careers you may be considering.
What does a career personality test measure?
These tests are designed to look at aspects of how you typically respond in a range of situations, tapping into how you feel or behave in different situations. These enduring patterns are what form the basis of the kind of person you are.
Personality testing is still a subject of much debate. How do you define personality and how do you measure something as abstract as thinking, feeling and behaviour patterns? Is our personality is inborn and fixed or does it develop over time. How far can we influence our own personality?
Because of this, different test producers measure personality in different ways.
For example, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® assessment looks at pairs of preferences…
- Extroversion – Introversion
- Intuition – Sensing
- Thinking – Feeling
- Judging – Perceiving
You can read more about this personality assessment here.
Or you might like to try the DISC Profile which makes an assessment on 4 dimensions of Dominance, Influence, Steadiness. and Compliance. This is a great information resource on DISC if you would like to find out more.
Then there is the Big Five model which is based on the following traits or categories:
- Extroversion
- Agreeableness
- Conscientiousness
- Neuroticism
- Openness
The 16PF model uses a wider range of ‘traits’ to measure your personality.
- Warmth
- Intellect
- Emotional Stability
- Aggressiveness
- Liveliness
- Dutifulness
- Social Assertiveness
- Sensitivity
- Paranoia
- Abstractness
- Introversion
- Anxiety
- Open-mindedness
- Independence
- Perfectionism
- Tension
OPQ – The Occupational Personality Questionnaire – offers feedback on:
- Relationships – Empathy, Sociability and Influence
- Thinking Style – Analysis, Creativity and Structure
- Feelings & Emotions – Emotionality & Dynamism
You can find out more about the impact of your personality on your career choice if you take the free career personality test on this site.
Test formats and results
A career personality assessment will usually consist of a questionnaire – often quite a long one – where you are asked questions to tease out your typical behaviours.
They may present you with a range of situations and ask you how you would feel or respond in these cases.
There are no right or wrong answers.
The questions are simply designed to uncover the underlying patterns of thinking and behaving that you commonly adopt.
If you are taking a personality test to help you with your career change plans, make sure that you respond naturally and do not try and second guess what you think the response ‘should’ be.
The results of your test will vary according to the kind of test you do.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® assessment provides an outline of your personality preferences and gives you an indication of the impact of these preferences in different situations.
So are personality tests useful?
Without a doubt, I believe that some kind of personality assessment is an essential part of a career change campaign.
Some of the jargon used in career personality tests can be misleading, so it is a good idea to take a test of this kind with the help of a qualified career coach. They will help you to understand and interpret the results correctly and will assist you in using them to contribute to your career change planning.
MBTI, Myers-Briggs and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
are trademarks or registered trademarks of the MBTI Trust, Inc.
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