COVID has illustrated life’s uncertainty and fragility. For many, priorities have changed. We may feel differently about the work we do and questioned how fulfilling we find it. Perhaps we’ve asked ourselves whether there is more to life.
Now is a good time to explore alternatives. What would interest and motivate you? Suit your personality and align with your values?
Rather than treat the notion of career planning as a serious endeavour, why not be playful with it?
I confess I have a weakness for free careers questionnaires. Here are a selection that will enable you to explore your ideas, values, preferences and motivations and have some fun in the process.
Health warning
No questionnaire is ‘the answer.’ A questionnaire won’t tell you what to do and shouldn’t be seen as attempting to label or limit you. You will always be much more than the results of a few questionnaires. However, you might find that you come up with some ideas that are worth further exploration. Discovering different facets of yourself may reveal what’s important to you and open up new ideas. We rarely invest much time reflecting on what we want from life. When we do, the time spent can be really valuable.
Find a buddy
Why not find a friend who is also looking to change their job and work through some questionnaires together? You can bounce ideas around and enjoy poking fun at each others’ attributes and shortcomings in a safe environment.
Personality preferences
A short, fun entry-level questionnaire to get you started is icould’s Buzz quiz. You can explore which ‘career animal’ you are and which celebrities you share personality preferences with.
A longer version of this questionnaire is the 16 Personalities which provides a more-in depth report into your personality preferences.
Knowing your preferences can help you to understand why some people are easier to work with than others. It can also help you describe your approach to work in interviews.
Communication
The IMA Strategies questionnaire describes how you approach communication with others. You will be provided with a report which will allocate you one of 4 communication ‘colours.’
Exploring how you communicate with others can provide you with helpful ways to describe your approach to working with others at job interviews.
Values
The Personal values assessment identifies those things you need in order to feel true to yourself.
Exploring what’s most important to you in work can be helpful when making decisions about which organisations you’d like to work for and whether their values fit with yours.
Motivation
The Work Values Test identifies specific values likely to motivate you in work. For example, I need a high degree of autonomy. If people try to organise me or my time I feel I’m suffocating and I wouldn’t thrive in that kind of environment.
Understanding what motivates you in work will help you to explore job roles and test out whether they would enable you to flourish.
Character Strengths
Positive Psychologist Martin Seligman has a range of free questionnaires on his website including Wellbeing, Resilience, Optimism and Happiness.
One of the more in-depth ones is the VIA Character Strengths questionnaire which identifies a range of personal qualities that you have to offer.
These can be helpful when you are ‘selling yourself’ in an application or at interview. If you’re asked ‘what would you bring to this role/team?’ you can prepare by qualifying your attributes with supporting evidence as this will make them feel more ‘real.’
Career ideas
There are two questionnaires on the Prospects website. These are Career Planner and Job Match.
Career Planner matches your skills, motivations and desires to different careers. Job Match will ask what you find interesting, rewarding and purposeful.
The Prospects website has an extensive list of different jobs and in-depth descriptions of what each involves.
Do you have what it takes to be your own boss?
These websites explore whether you have the necessary attributes to become a successful entrepreneur.
In summary
Have fun ‘playing’ at careers. Taking work less seriously can sometimes enable us to be more creative in our thinking. We may surprise ourselves with the possibilities that emerge.
It’s never too late to be what you might have been. George Elliot
