Psychometric Assessments

You might come across such assessments either on the internet, or through a career counsellor. They are useful but only if conducted properly. Many a times, people use them standalone and instead of qualitative self reflection/introspection, which is not recommended. Self reflection must form the foundation of your career decision making and development. Nothing can beat the insights generated from such an exercise and it can also be very rewarding in many ways. Assessments should be used to complement self reflection i.e. to further refine results, provide more ideas or eliminate choices.

It is also important to remember that you should not take the results from an assessment as the last word on yourself. Every person is unique and the results provided by an assessment might not capture every aspect of you. Assessments need to be interpreted properly and in the right context, which is why most advanced/good assessments will need to be taken through a career guidance practitioner. We certainly recommend that over most free/online/self administered assessments. If you do take a free/online assessment be very careful in selecting good quality ones and consider having one session with a practitioner just to make sure you are interpreting it correctly.

A distinction can be made between assessments that help individuals assess the content of career choices, or 'what to choose', and those that assess the process of choice, or 'how to choose' (which assess the skills needed for effective career decision making). In this article, we will focus on 'what to choose' since you will probably see more of these.

Perhaps the most commonly used instruments are occupational interest inventories. Interest inventories help individuals identify occupational fields that they are likely to find rewarding. Typically, an individuals' responses to the items in the inventory are compared to those of people working in a range of occupations, to see how similar their interests are to those of people working in those occupations. One of the best known interest inventories is the Strong Interest Inventory. Note: If you decide to take such assessments without the guidance of a career advisor, the Self Directed Search and Career Key are some of the better ones and are also good value for your money.

Measures of work values, or basic beliefs about what is important to the individual in the work context, are also seen frequently. One example is the Minnesota Importance Questionnaire. This instrument requires the individual to rate the importance of 20 work-related values or needs. Examples of some of the values are ability utilization, achievement, activity, advancement, authority, compensation, creativity and recognition.

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