Quintessential Careers:
Career Assessment Do's and Don'ts
by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.
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Here are the keys to successful career assessment. Follow these simple rules and you should achieve success in this self-discovery process.
- Do be aware that assessments are available to help
guide you toward the right career for you. A qualified career
counselor can administer, score, and interpret these assessments.
A number of free career assessments also are available on the
Internet, though many experts question their reliability.
- Do compare online career assessments to see which ones
might meet your needs. See our detailed
assessment
comparison chart.
- Do keep your expectations in check when you take free online
assessments. You may attain some direction and guidance from these tests,
but don’t be overly reliant on them for magic answers.
- Don't discount the possibility that these free online assessments
might suggest to you some career ideas and directions you had never thought
of and that are worth further exploration.
- Do take several different assessments to help you learn
more about yourself and to help you determine which tests provide the
most reliable results for you.
- Do print out and retain the results of the assessments
you take online. Compare results, and see if you can see patterns --
a “career snapshot” -- beginning to emerge.
- Do trust your gut. If a free online assessment tells you
something about yourself that doesn’t ring true, disregard that information.
- Don't rely on free online assessments alone for
self-discovery and career guidance. Meet with a career counselor;
college students and alumni usually have free or inexpensive
access to counselors. Supplement the results you’ve obtained
from free online assessments with other assessments the
counselor might administer. Ask the counselor to help you
interpret and integrate the results of various assessments.
- Do use career assessments with a variety of other
self-discovery activities, such as examining your strengths
and weaknesses and the activities you most enjoy and least enjoy.
And Do read our article,
Online
Career Assessments: Helpful Tools of Self-Discovery.
- Do have fun taking career assessments. Self-discovery is almost always an enlightening and often entertaining process.
Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key college, career, and job-search terms by going to our Job-Seeker's Glossary of Job-Hunting Terms.
Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., creative director and associate
publisher of Quintessential Careers, is an educator, author,
and blogger who provides content for Quintessential Careers,
edits QuintZine,
an electronic newsletter for jobseekers, and blogs about storytelling
in the job search at A Storied
Career. Katharine, who earned her PhD in organizational behavior
from Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, OH, is author of Dynamic
Cover Letters for New Graduates and A Foot in the Door: Networking
Your Way into the Hidden Job Market (both published by Ten Speed Press),
as well as Top Notch Executive Resumes (Career Press); and with
Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., Dynamic Cover Letters, Write Your
Way to a Higher GPA (Ten Speed), and The Complete Idiot's Guide
to Study Skills (Alpha). Visit her
personal Website
or reach her by e-mail at
kathy(at)quintcareers.com.
Have you seen all our career assessment resources?
Read all our job-hunting do's and don'ts.
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