Career Satisfaction Tests

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Career Satisfaction Tests

Are you feeling dissatisfied with your job? Can’t seem to get along with your coworkers or boss? Unhappy with the kind of work you’re doing? Don’t want to fall into a boring job again? There’s a way to know what kind of job will make you happy – with certainty! A career satisfaction test is a test that provides a list of careers based on different elements of you. You can take a test that measures your interests (what you like), your personality (how you generally operate), or your abilities (what you can do). You can also take a test that combines these elements. All of these different types of tests are geared towards helping you find a job in which you are satisfied.

Found satisfying career with career satisfaction test

Find a satisfying career with a career satisfaction test!

Interests Tests

The most common career test is an interest test. Interest tests assess how much you like certain aspects of work and match you with jobs that most closely fit with those patterns. I recommend the Strong Interest Test, the best interest test on the market today.

Personality Tests

Another important way to find a satisfying career is to use a personality test. However, few personality tests offer career-specific information. But the Myers Briggs Test does. It supplies you with a list of careers that suit your personality based on the personalities of professionals in those fields. It is likely that a career that fits your personality will result in career satisfaction.

Abilities Tests

The last type of test is an ability test. The two most common ability tests are CAPS and THAB. When you’re looking for career satisfaction, the THAB is by far the most superior career ability test. The unique thing it does is show which of your abilities demand expression. This is critical for career satisfaction. If you’re dissatisfied with your job right now, you might want to think, “What am I good at doing? What do I love doing? Am I able to do those things in my job right now?” If the answer is no, these may be abilities that demand expression. This means happiness is hard to find if your job doesn’t require you to use those abilities. Check out THAB Ability Assessment for Adult General Work Ability Test.

After taking one or more of these tests, it is a smart idea to make an appointment with The Career Profiler. I can help you understand and apply your results. Together we can make a plan to prepare for a job that will make you happy, then land that job and get promoted! With my help you can find the job that makes you most satisfied. Fill out the form at the bottom of the page if you want help finding the best job for you.

Career Satisfaction Tests: Combination

Probably the best approach to take when seeking a satisfying career is to purchase a career testing package. This combination of tests assesses all three of the critical internal components of career satisfaction: interests, abilities, and personality. For this I recommend the following package: OPTIM’s Best Suited Career Fit / Career Match Tests

I wish there were less exensive options, but none of them could achieve what this package can. If you truly need a less expensive package, I’d recommend one that assesses interests and abilities such as SII ADULT GENERAL Expanded Career Profile and Summary plus THAB Adult Ability Battery

If you’re concerned about your or your employee’s career satisfaction, check out these two blogs:

Know if Its Career Satisfaction or Job Satisfaction And Why It Matters

Is it Career Satisfaction or Job Satisfaction?

 

Four career satisfaction tests

Find a Career that Achieves Career Satisfaction

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How to find a Satisfying Career

You’re probably here because you feel dissatisfied in your career! Or maybe you’ve had a bad career experience and don’t want to make the same mistake twice. Did you know that career satisfaction comes from a job that fits with your personality, interest, and abilities. Why? The more a career or occupation fits with who you are, the more satisfied you will be with it.

Career satisfaction tests are the single most efficient way to find a list of careers that would be satisfying to you. You simply need to choose what you want your test to focus on. There are four options that stress different parts of yourself. Taking an interest test will measures what you like and enjoy and find satisfying careers based on that. A personality-satisfaction test takes into account how you operate in the world. An abilities-satisfaction test measures what you can (and must) do (aka career abilities) and then determines what careers would satisfy you. Or you can take a satisfaction test that combines information from those three categories! Click directly on the links above to access the tests, or read this post on career satisfaction first for more information.

You can find more information about career satisfaction and how to avoid it in many places on this site. Here’s another blog post about the not-so-secret reason why employees quit their jobs. This information is pertinent not only for employees but also for employers. The Career Profiler recognizes that when employees are happy and successful in the best job for them, everyone in the company benefits!

Career Dissatisfaction or Job Dissatisfaction?

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Is it Career Satisfaction or Job Satisfaction? Does it Matter?

Are you ready to fix your career dissatisfaction? First you need to identify what type of satisfaction issue you are dealing with. A career satisfaction problem must be handled differently than a job satisfaction issue.

Career Dissatisfaction

To resolve a career dissatisfaction issue, you will probably need to find a career that suits you better than the one you are currently in. The most efficient way to do this is to take a career test.

Career tests offer you matches or lists of careers based on your different personal factors. Some career satisfaction-based tests measure abilities, while others measure your interests. Still others use personality information to find careers most satisfying for you. Click here for more on career satisfaction tests.

Job Dissatisfaction

On the other hand, a job satisfaction issue is resolved by either adjusting aspects of your current job or within your current company, or finding a job at a different company doing roughly the same work as in your current career.

The first step to improving your job satisfaction level is to determine what aspects of it are most dissatisfying for you. Dissatisfaction with a job comes from four places:

  1. Extrinsic factors such as pay raises, favorable job evaluations, and bonuses.
  2. Intrinsic factors such as meaningfulness, choice, competence, and progress
  3. Work values such as serving society, competition, and autonomy
  4. Working conditions such as interpersonal relations and stress. Click here for more on Job Satisfaction Tests that can help you isolate your specific job satisfaction issue.

The second step to improve your job satisfaction is determining if changes can be made to your current job or within the company. If you think this is possible, meet with the appropriate people within your company. Together you can make improvements that directly and significantly improve your job satisfaction. Sometimes it is helpful to partner with a career coach to identify the best strategy to do this. Get in touch with The Career Profiler if you would like some guidance in approaching the right people.

If it is not possible to improve your current company, you will need to find a different job. Finding a new job helps you make sure you won’t run into dissatisfaction again. Two key strategies to achieve job satisfaction in a future job are:

  1. Writing a power resume. This articulates your strengths, assets, and talents in a concise, clear, and easy to read manner. It also must communicate your job satisfaction factors as part of the profile statement so you won’t end up dissatisfied again.
  2. Engaging a job search strategy that identifies the right companies to work for. You will also need to secure the right job vacancies within those companies. A career coach with job search and employment strategy experience can help you get this done quickly and effectively.

Improve Satisfaction

Finally, I hope these tips will help you get out of your dissatisfaction and into a happier place. Get in touch with The Career Profiler if you need help, motivation, or have questions. Another great step you can take is to continue researching this subject by reading the blogs below.,

Achieve Career Satisfaction

Career Satisfaction Tests

Job Satisfaction Tests to Identify Your Personal Job Satisfaction Needs

How to Land a Job that Offers Job Satisfaction

Job Satisfaction Tests

 

Use our career tools to gain success

Is It a Career Satisfaction or Job Satisfaction Issue?

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Career Satisfaction vs. Job Satisfaction

Most people look for career advice when they are dissatisfied with something about their career or job. But it is just as important to understand the positive aspects about a career or job. After all, how can you achieve career or job satisfaction if you don’t know what it is?
I've Finally Got Career Satisfaction AND Job Satisfaction

Career Satisfaction is an overall satisfaction with your current career.  It relates to the level of happiness you feel in your chosen occupation and with the work you perform as part of the responsibilities of that occupation.

If you feel dissatisfaction with either with the kind of work you are performing, or with the overall responsibilities and duties of the occupation, you are most likely experiencing career dissatisfaction.  Click here to start process of finding more satisfying careers.

Job satisfaction relates to the level of satisfaction you feel towards specific aspects of your job and its environment. In other words, job satisfaction is a function of your feelings of contentment with your working conditions, environment, job benefits, work location, work relationships, and the like.

If you feel dissatisfaction with your job – the environment, the people at work, the location, benefits, conditions and so on – you are experiencing job dissatisfaction. Click here to review job satisfaction tests.

Improve Satisfaction

Below you can find helpful links in getting you on the path to career or job satisfaction.

Achieve Career Satisfaction

Why It Matters to Know the Difference between Career Satisfaction and Job Satisfaction

Career Satisfaction Tests

Job Satisfaction Tests

 Is it Career Satisfaction or Job Satisfaction?

What's the best career for me?

Best Careers for Women in Satisfaction and Pay

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Most Satisfying, Top Paying, and Best Careers for Women

What is the best career for women? Which is the most satisfying career for women? What career pays women the most?

According to Forbes, teaching is the most satisfying job for women. As a chief executive or a medical professional, a woman can earn the highest pay – up to $165,000 and $130,00 respectively. Currently, almost half of all business are started by women. There is even more data that you can find at Best Careers for Women. These are all good questions and interesting facts… but what about the best career for you?

What about you? If you had to choose a new career for yourself, which one would you choose? What is the best career for you as one of many women?

Post your answer at my Facebook page and LIKE the page to receive a 33% discount coupon to use at www.TestEts on any career test or career test package for yourself. If you have no idea what your dream career is, I’m still here to help! Fill out the form below to get into touch with me and we can work on finding the career that will make you most happy and successful!

 

Blind to Your Success and Happiness Potential

Career Personality and Career Personality Tests: part 6A

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Part 6a: Career Personality Tests use Subjective Assessments

All true career personality tests use subjective measures to assess the relevant factors. But when choosing such a test, it’s important to keep these things in mind.

Career Personality Test Limitations

Career Personality Tests have Limitations to Know About

Career Personality Tests use Subjective Measurements to Extrapolate Career Test Results

Of course, there is no perfect career personality test. But there are an awful lot of great ones, and taking a few can give you the best idea of what career fits you. When taking a career personality test, keep these limitations in mind so that you can get the most accurate results.

Gut Response

First of all, for a career tests to be based on subjective measurements means that results are based on what you “think” or deem to be the correct answer. Your response could be a guess, but it should be more like a “gut” response. In other words, the answer to a question on the test should result from your first impression to it. You’ll probably get the best result if you just allow your automatic gut reaction to take control.

Language

Secondly, career personality tests provide word-based options from which to select your answer. In other words, the subjective test is based solely on words or language. This means the confines of our language will shape your results. It’s best to think of the answer you choose according to its common meaning in order to get the most accurate results.

Another way to understand the impact of language in subjective measurements is to consider the following example. If I say the word “black,” what pops up in your head immediately? This may seem like a simple question to you. Well, over the past 15 years, I have received 39 different responses to this word including Halloween, blue collar worker, night, and white. The most common answer is white. Therefore, if a career personality test includes a question about “black” as part of their career test, the answer “white” would be one of the multiple choices answers. If you don’t think of “black” in terms of “white” you might have either a difficult time selecting from the answer options or you might attribute a different understanding to the word altogether.  As you can see, your personal understanding of a word is, therefore, critical to producing accurate results on any career personality test.

Career Test Confustion occurs when you have not had enough opportunities to discover who you are

Opportunities

Thirdly, career tests are impacted by the opportunities you have had to know yourself. For instance, if you are a young adult who grew up in a household where your parents determined your activities, you watched a lot of TV, held no prior jobs, and  engaged in no volunteer activities, you likely will not have had enough opportunities to know your personal responses to various situation. You probably don’t know your interests in a variety of categories that would determine accurate test results. This makes it very difficult to know how to respond to a question. An inaccurate answer could yield inaccurate results. While this is an extreme example, it is relevant for our society today. Many young adults have their lives so programmed by their parents, lack of self-knowledge is one of the unintended consequences of their good intentions.

There are more subtle examples of the lack of opportunities to know oneself.  Most, if not all, career test takers are “stumped” by at least a couple of questions.  Rather than react to it as they should, these test takers then ponder the question for to long, which can lead to inaccuracies. Bottom-line, the greater your personal self-knowledge,
the better and more accurate your career personality test results.

Purposeful Manipulation

Fourthly, tests can be manipulated. In other words, you might be taking a career personality test as part of work team and know that the result of your career test will be shared with the group. In this situation it might be tempting to answer according to what you want your coworkers to think of you. You have thereby skewed the results of your career tests and the career test results are not accurate.

Chance

Finally, the factor of chance plays a role in every career test. For instance, if you take a career personality test on a “bad hair day,” subsequently you will likely receive “bad hair day” results. The way you feel one day might change the results slightly compared to another day.

But don’t worry! Even though these limitations are part of every test, this does not mean your results will be dangerously inaccurate. The most well-researched tests have these limitations factored into the results.

Another Thing to Remember

Which career personality tests are the most susceptible to these limitations? The Myers Briggs is probably the most susceptible, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a useful, reliable, or valid tool. Because it is! The publishers have recognized its susceptibilities and published a “test the test” process that I’ve been using with clients for years.

If ever you have taken a career personality test and questioned the accuracy of your results, please contact me or another career test expert to review the results with you. I can help you determine the inaccuracy and come up with an alternative solution to taking the test again. Or, you can simply retake the test at www.testets.com.  Always remember, after taking a career test, get a career test consultation. This helps you understand your results, applications in real-life working situations, and brief descriptions and examples of your occupational matches. I can walk through your results with you and start on a plan to grab your career by the horns.

Still Have Questions…?

Given all of these limitations . . . Why would you want to take a career personality test at all? Starting to second guess your old Myers Briggs results? Wondering which career personality tests produce the most accurate results? These questions, the limitations, and reasons to take a test anyway, will be presented in the next blog (part 6b).  Stay tuned.

Career Personality and Career Personality Tests: part 6

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Part 6: Career Personality Tests use Subjective
Assessments

All true career personality tests measure your personality using a subjective career questionnaire.  This means that you choose an answer (usually one word) to describe an occupation, activity, or object. Then, rapidly interpret the meanings and select one of them based on your “gut” response. The Myers Briggs offers two options from which to choose from, whereas the Strong Interest Inventory offers either 3 or 5 choices on a continuum. The DISC is unusual in that it requires you to make a “least like” and a “most like” among four options.

If you are interested in these types of tests, you’ll find descriptions and samples at www.testets.com

Career Personality and Career Personality Tests: part 5

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Part 5: Career Personality Test Types – The Right Career Test for You

All career personality tests fall into three categories: occupation generating, occupation matching, and neither occupation generating nor matching. Each type of career personality test has unique features and addresses different career needs. This blog should help you find the right career test for your situation.

Occupation Generating Career Tests

Take a paper test to generate

Some career personality tests are paper tests that generate jobs lists

These are inexpensive, simple to use, and quick tests. They are most appropriate for persons wanting many career options, needing an inexpensive test, wanting a paper test (as opposed to online), and for lower level jobs in corporations, trades, or front-line service. Among the most common and best on the market are: COPS system tests and SDS tests.

Occupation Matching Career Tests

Next, occupation matching tests are meant to align personality traits and jobs that require those traits for success and satisfaction. That means that after taking this test, your personality traits will be matched with a career that will most likely result in your success and happiness. These are, therefore, especially useful for persons seeking to discover their first career, a new career, a career direction, an ideal career, getting clues to define a career niche, and changing careers because of career dissatisfaction. The best tests of this kind include Strong Interest Inventory and Myers Briggs Type Test.

Non-occupation Generating or Matching Career Tests

Lastly, non-generating or matching tests do not produce a list or a set of occupations matching your personality. Instead, they give descriptions of how the test-taker would likely behave on the job.  For example, the FIRO-B test describes how one relates to others on the job such as a boss, co-workers, teams, and colleagues. Another such test, the DISC test, measures one’s natural and adapted ways of communicating, contributing, leading, interacting, and performing at work. These tests, therefore, are usually used for job performance improvements, employment screening, and career development.

The test you choose depends on your life context. What is your current career? Do you know your purpose (career change, satisfaction improvement, etc.)? What is your income or desired income? Choosing the right career test might be tricky. Fill out the form below to ask The Career Profiler for help if you need it.

 

Career Personality and Career Personality Tests: part 4

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Part 4: Other Career Theories (not Career Personality theories)

Some of the career trait theory tests do not measure personality characteristics but instead measure abilities, aptitudes and values. While these do not fall into career personality theories, tests of this nature should be considered as part of your career decision process.

Career ability tests are almost the same as career aptitude tests with an expanded and more detailed explanations for career applications such as the Highlands Ability Battery. They identify where a person’s ability to perform in a certain career role and could be viewed therefore as providing some insight to career success.  Career values tests, of which there are few useful ones on the market with the exception of Career Anchors, assess ones current priorities critical for making a final career decision.

In addition to career type and trait theories, there are factor and life span theories.  Holland’s typology could be categorized as factor theory in that it classifies occupations by certain task factors.  The Strong Interest Inventory is the best career test example of this career theory.  Others include Self-Directed Search and Campbell Interest Inventory.

Life span career theory is the final other type of career theory.  Donald Super constructed the life span and life space theory identifying the critical influences on a person in different roles and life stages. Few tests are available for life span theories.  Assessment of life span typically relies on paper pencil exercises or career interviews with a career counselor or career coach.

Career personality testing is usually one of the first steps a career coach or career counselor should take you through once they have assessed a person’s career needs.  A Life Span assessment should be included in the assessment or career profiling phase and ideally should follow the career personality testing phase.

Career Life Span Assessments identify key career and work values and the current priority of these values which a person uses to ultimately decide upon one of the possible suitable career paths.  It also identifies current lifestyle needs and influences of others on the decision.  If ever a person struggles with choosing between career options, it is wise to engage in a  type of life span assessment.  The Career Profiler identifies the life span assessment phase as the nurture part of the profiling step.  See Career Steps Model.

Career Personality and Career Personality Tests: part 3

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What is Career Personality? Part 3: Theories

There are two prevalent theories that address the origin of career personalities. These are like two different lenses through which we understand career personality.

Type theory classifies collection of career traits that persist over time into broad general categories. These categories are associated with various occupations. Therefore, a person’s trait collection determines a well-fitting career. The Myers Briggs type Indicator is a good example of a test based on type theory.

Trait theory classifies specific individual characteristics in terms of effectiveness in a particular occupation. It assesses the degree of each characteristic in a person. An example of this is John Holland’s theory which assesses interest factors.  Career tests that use trait theory are the Strong Interest Inventory and the Self-Directed Search. You can see samples of those tests by clicking the links.

 

Other Career Theories

Within trait theory, some tests do not measure personality characteristics. Instead, they measure abilities, aptitudes, and values. These tests are less common, but they are available at Testets.

In addition to type and trait theories, there are factor and life span career theories. An example of the first is Holland’s typology. It classifies occupations by certain task factors. Donald Super constructed the life span and life space career theory. It identifies the important influences on a person in different roles and at different life stages. There aren’t many career tests based on life span theories, but a paper and pencil assessment can measure this. If you’re interested in this you can also set up an interview with a career counselor or career coach who can assess you in this way.

What more would you like to know about career personality theories, or career theories in general? Shoot me an email and I’d be glad to answer.