In this post, I outline some of the free career questionnaires available to those of you contemplating a career change, whether through choice or circumstance.
Working life is feeling precarious for many right now. For employers, the recent increase in National Insurance and Minimum Wage and spiralling utility costs are squeezing budgets, inevitably leading to cutbacks.
If you’re looking for another job or seeking a career move, this may be an opportunity to take stock and reflect on what you want from your next role before applying. Articulating why you want a role and what you bring will strengthen your application and improve your interview performance.
Each of the following online questionnaires provides something a bit different. You might choose to complete one or more.
Health warning
A questionnaire won’t tell you what to do and shouldn’t be seen as attempting to label or limit you. However, exploring different facets of yourself can reveal what’s important to you and suggest new possibilities.
1. Your Career Anchors
Designed by Edgar Schein, the Career Anchors questionnaire aims to determine your career motivations, values and attitudes to work. Schein’s questionnaire invites you to respond to 40 statements. Scores reveal your personal Career Anchor. There are eight anchors, which combine your abilities, values and motivations. Understanding what you need to be fulfilled makes it easier to understand why you may not be happy in your job and what kind of work you’re more likely to find personally rewarding. Schein Career Anchors Test
2. Your Work Motivations
The Work Values Test identifies what’s likely to motivate you in work. For example, I need a high degree of autonomy. If other people try to control me or my time I can feel I’m suffocating, so I need the freedom to manage my own work. Understanding what motivates you in work will help you appraise different job roles and explore whether you’ll flourish in them.
3. Your Personal Values
The Personal values assessment identifies the things you need to to be 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.
4. Generating 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 jobs and contains in-depth descriptions of what each involves.
5. Your preferences
The 16 Personalities questionnaire, based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or MBTI, identifies your personality preferences. For example, how you approach decision-making. Understanding your preferences can help you describe your approach to work at the interview.
6. Character Strengths
Positive Psychologist Martin Seligman has a range of free questionnaires on his website including Wellbeing, Resilience, Optimism and Happiness. The VIA Character Strengths questionnaire identifies the personal qualities you have to offer. These can be helpful when you are ‘selling yourself’ in an application or at an interview. If you’re asked “What would you bring to this role/team?” you can select some of the qualities highlighted, with examples of where you’ve demonstrated them.
7. Communication
The IMA Strategies questionnaire describes how you approach communication with others. You’ll receive a report which will describe your communication style in relation to one of four colours and what that means. Exploring how you communicate with others can provide you with helpful ways to describe your approach to working with others at job interviews.
Action
Once you’ve explored some or all of the resources, take some time to reflect on the various reports and information you now have. Are there any emerging themes or patterns? Any insights or surprises? Collectively, they may provide you with some useful insights that will help give you the edge in both applications and at interview.
You may find this post on understanding your Strengths helpful.
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom
Aristotle