One of The Career Profiler’s many skills is handwriting analysis. She recently came across a handwriting sample of an employee at financial planning firm. This sample displayed unique handwriting. It was significantly different than the norm.

Most college-aged women’s (the age range of this employee) handwriting shows that they are warm, caring, careful to be accepted, and intelligent. But in this particular handwriting sample, The Career Profiler saw what she called as aggressive intelligence. The handwriting indicated an intelligence that was sharp and highly perceptive – more so than any other sample she’d seen. It demonstrated the writer critically analyzed every concept, idea, opinion, and piece of data. This analysis can be done

To an untrained eye, most handwriting is simply legible or illegible. To The Carer Profiler, your handwriting is an entire world describing you

automatically, as an instinctive response. With these analysis skills, the employee could easily find flaws in data. This is a talent any employer, especially a financial services company, would love to hire. Or is it?

What’s “Wrong” with That?

The problem was, there was one particular letter in her handwriting that indicated she would use information to her advantage at the expense of others. With a high level of character, this person would be an opportunist. But if her character were of an average or low level, this person would be cunning and deceitful.

What would this look like at work? She would see a weakness in a work relationship and take advantage of it in some way. If she disliked someone, she would exploit that person’s weakness to gain the upper hand – a promotion, or even secure her adversary’s firing. If her work involved handling money, she might quite naturally take the path of embezzlement. Of course, this boils down to a character issue, but it was through handwriting analysis that The Career Profiler could alert both the employee and her employer of this personality tendency.

The Bottom Line: Know Yourself and Your Employees

The same kind of information can be found for you! Do you want to know more about yourself or your employees? Do you want to protect your company and find the best employees? As in this example, you might be warned of the early signs of a problematic worker. Or you can keep an eye out for personal flaws that you were previously blind to.

With over twenty years of experience in career coaching, The Career Profiler has all the tools she needs to help you know yourself and your business. You can send a handwriting sample to her today. In the analysis consultation, she will walk you through the meaning of your handwriting and what it tells about your work performance, personality, and abilities. Take advantage of all the ways you can know yourself! Get your handwriting analyzed today.

In addition to handwriting, The Career Profiler knows all about aptitude tests, career tests, and personality tests. The Highlands Ability Battery is one of the main tools in her toolbox and is a great way to find out more than just your handwriting. You can take THAB today too!

Now that we have looked at Classification and Concept Organization separately, let’s see what careers are available for the whole spectrum of scores.  Want to be a successful writer?  A teacher?  Have a specific career in mind?  Double check that the career you desire uses the scores you have in Classification and Concept Organization. If you still don’t know your Convergent Thinking score, take The Highlands Ability Battery today!

Convergent Thinking is a driving ability, which means that if you pursue a job that requires a CL or CO score you do not have, you will not be very happy or successful in that job!  Find out if you are an inductive reasoner or a process thinker, a decisive reasoner or deductive reasoner.  Then consider a job that uses both of those aptitudes.

Which reasoning combination are you?

High Classification, High Concept Organization

High Classification, Low Concept Organization

Low Classification, High Concept Organization

Low Classification, Low Concept Organization

High Classification, High Concept Organization

These thinkers think “to the max.” They are called consultative because of their ability to solve problems quickly and explain well to others. A lot of outlets are needed through which to express their full-steam-ahead way of organizing, thinking, and explaining. Take note that follow-through is not your strong suit. You are better at thinking up solutions to problems, not implementing those solutions.

Find a career that requires solving lots of problems quickly and explaining the ins and outs of them. Consultative thinkers are known as the classic “law combination.” The Highlands Ability Battery notes: “A lawyer sizes up the facts of a case, works with curveballs along the way, and must communicate with clients, other lawyers, and judges their rationale.”

The Consultive combination: the law combination.

Many professionals who score high in Concept Organization are in the sciences and mathematics. Other careers include engineers, accountants, secretaries and office managers, writers and editors, teachers, travel agents and tour planners, event planners, political and advertising campaign planners, and computer programmers.

Adjust to your high Classification need to explain problem-solving by working in environments within these fields that require human interaction. For example, a computer programmer might find a niche in customer service, where she could explain solutions to customers. Accountants can find a niche in financial advising, where they discuss the solutions to financial problems.

High Classification, Low Concept Organization

This combination is called diagnostic, which gives you a clue as to what kind of job would suit this person. A medical doctor can use these aptitudes to come with the solution to a problem quickly. She can put many seemingly unrelated pieces together and come up with a diagnosis.  Unlike the consultative combination, these people find

High classification, low concept organization: Diagnostic

it tiresome to explain their reasoning to others. They would rather just connect the dots, solve the problem, and move on with it! According to Highlands Ability Battery test-takers, diagnostics feel “at home in fast-paced environments [requiring] a strong need to problem-solve.”

However, their low Concept Organization sets them apart from consultants in that diagnostics are not always great at explanations and communication. Like a doctor, they’d rather figure out the problem, prescribe the solution, and go to the next patient! If you are a diagnostic thinker, take this tendency to not communicate well into account and try to find a way to minimize that kind of activity in your job.

Low Classification, High Concept Organization

“Naturally logical in problem analysis and thorough in ensuring all things have been considered, [the Analytical combination] can be slower to arrive at conclusions.” These well-organized, thorough thinkers

Low classification, high concept organization: Analytical

work better in slow environments.  These thinkers are analytical. Most careers will reflect this title: financial advisors who analyze a financial situation and discuss solutions with their clients. Or

statisticians who think through all the information before forming a conclusion. They go deeper in problems, more slowly. They are excellent researchers, in it for the long haul.

If you are an analytical thinker, be sure that your job provides you with enough time and depth to understand information. If you work in a fast-paced environment that is only interested in surface-level explanations, happiness and success will be hard to come by!

Low Classification, Low Concept Organization

Don’t overlook these “low” scorers! Called experiential workers, they gather most of their knowledge and problem-solving ability from past experience. The Fundraising Coach says, “This is probably the ideal executive or managerial problem-solving type. Given their ability to apply past experiences to present situations, it may be advisable for people with this combination to get as much varied work experience as possible early on in their careers.”

Experiential thinkers can make great teachers

They tend to be patient with people, and thus are usually better implementers than the impatient diagnostics or consulters. The latter are better at brainstorming ideas, rather than following through with a plan. Experiential thinkers often find success as teachers. After years of teaching experience, they know how to address a learning block and how to best approach explaining a concept to students.

What Now?

Now you know the many careers that best fit people with different combinations of Classification and Concept Organization thinking. This information is highly valuable for people who are looking for a new job, trying to improve in their career, or are planning their career trajectory.

If you don’t know your Classification or Concept Organization scores, it’s time for you to find out! The Career Profiler recommends The Highlands Ability Battery as the best aptitude test. Then you can get a FREE consultation with her to discuss your results. If you already know your Convergent Thinking score but are not sure how to apply it to your life, a meeting with The Career Profiler will help you! Make a plan that guarantees happiness and success in your career.

In our last blog we looked at Classification, which is how a person organizes information. This week, we’ll learn about Concept Organization, or CO. Similarly to Classification, CO measures the ability to organize concepts and arrange ideas in logical sequence. The Career Profiler differentiates between low CO scorers and high ones. She calls low CO scorers decisive reasoners and high CO scorers deductive reasoners.

Deductive Reasoners

These high CO thinkers go through all the logical steps before making a decision. While this is thorough, it can be hard for them to make a decision because they take so many different elements into account. They have highly organized minds and well developed internal organization systems. But this doesn’t always translate to an organized workspace. They’re good at organizing systems and plans into logical steps. Creating structure is where these thinkers thrive.

Concept Organization tells how you receive and organize information and then make decisions

Decisive Reasoners

On the other hand, decisive reasoners prefer to walk into a situation that has already been organized for them. Going through all the thorough steps it takes to organize a problem and find the solution is not for them. The single most important element in a decision or problem jumps out at them so they don’t have to weigh all the possibilities.

They are much more decisive for this reason and don’t ponder over what decision to make. The right decision jumps out at them quickly because they are constantly thinking about the “bottom line.” 

When communicating with a decisive reasoner, cut right to the chase – that’s all they care about! They don’t want to go through all the rationale of a decision you made or the reasons why they are being assigned the task you are giving them.

Decisive reasoners complete one task at a time (in order of importance), rather than multi-tasking like many high CO thinkers do. They can get overwhelmed if too much is expected of them at one time.

But How do They Work?

We will answer this question in our next blog, which will bring together Concept Organization with last week’s Classification! As you know, you should never pick a career based on only one attribute or personality factor. It’s important to know how your many interests, aptitudes, and abilities can work together to make you happy in successful in a career. As driving abilities, it is even more important to understand how these two can help you find the right job for you. If you are ready to find out about your strengths and find the perfect job for you, you can start with The Highlands Ability Battery. This is an ability test that the Career Profiler loves. Stay tuned for our Thinking Series Part III: Careers for Classification and Concept Organization!

You may not have thought of this before, but the way we think has a huge impact on our lives. Oftentimes we only consider whether or not a person is thinking, not how they are doing it. But this has huge consequences!  Classification is an aptitude that answers the question “How do I organize my thoughts so that I solve problems?” Knowing the answer to this question actually helps you succeed and be happy in life.

Welcome to the Thinking Series that explores the many ways of thinking and how they are understood in the career world. Career tests call these ways of thinking by different names, though they may be talking about the same way of thinking. The Highlands Ability Battery, for example, calls them abilities. Other tests call them aptitudes. But both refer to the same phenomenon: the innate skills that determine what kind of career you can excel in.

Classification

Today we’ll be looking at what The Highlands Ability Battery calls Classification. The Career Profiler, however, differentiates between a high and low score in Classification. She calls a high score in Classification inductive thinking, and a low score in Classification process thinking.

Classification is the organization of ideas into different classes or compartments. When a person tests low in Classification (process thinking), you can think of them as sitting in front of two boxes and deciding if an object belongs in one or the other.

Low Classification (Process Thinking)

Those who score low in Classification are process thinkers. They organize ideas meticulously

Process thinkers categorize in the following ways:

• ask appropriate questions
• patient with the process of organization
• feel comfortable with structures and rules
• think in a step-by-step way

In the workplace, this kind of person is easy to manage and often works well in a position that uses tried-and-true methods of procedure. Sometimes they can come off as slow thinkers or workers. But this does not mean they are not intelligent. It’s simply that compared to those who score high in Classification, they are perhaps not as noticeable.

High Classification (Inductive Thinkers)

Those scoring high in Classification (inductive thinkers) bring to mind, in juxtaposition to low Classification, a whirlwind. These are the kind of people who “get” things easily and quickly. Inductive thinkers:

• Recognize problems and answers almost immediately
• Are fast thinkers
• quick problem-solvers
• become impatient or bored in slow environments
• Sees pros and cons easily
• Finds commonalities among different things

It’s easy for them to follow a common thread in a sea of information, forming conclusions based on those relationships very quickly. On the negative side, they sometimes have difficulty following through on an idea, or slowing down to learn a process. Unless they have a high vocabulary, they often have trouble

Inductive thinkers connect puzzle pieces easily

explaining themselves and their reasoning. Without vocabulary or lots of knowledge, they may not know exactly why they are right about something. Like other kinds of reasoning abilities, this aptitude is dependent on knowledge for its proper use. To be able to make the diagnostic leap from symptoms to disease, for example, a doctor first has to know the disease. People with inductive reasoning and little knowledge generally face continuing difficulties.

The Series

Our next blog, Concept Organization, looks at a different style of thinking. Like Classification, those who score low and high on this test are called by different names: deductive reasoners vs. decisive reasoners. Then we will look at what happens when these four ways of thinking are paired with each other to make Convergent Thinking.

Why It Matters

You may be thinking, “this is a lot of jargon for some silly personality stuff.” But it’s not just jargon, and it’s not even just personality. These aptitudes determine how you function in the world – in your career, your relationships, your education. They help you understand yourself and the people around you.

If you are in a leadership position in your company, it helps you understand how to get the best work out of your employees. If you’re an employee struggling with your work load or feeling bored and dissatisfied with your job, it helps you understand how to best engage with your work and succeed. All of these things lead to career happiness. The Career Profiler wants to help you achieve success and happiness! Find out what your Convergent Thinking style today by taking The Highlands Ability Battery. All of this information is tied together in Convergent Thinking, the combination of Classification and Concept Organization. It will give you an even more detailed picture of the best job for you.

Did you know handwriting can tell not only about individual people, but whole generations?

The Career Profiler has studied handwriting for over 10 years, collecting samples from a variety of people over many generations. You may never have thought of the fact that handwriting changes over time. But it does. In the few generations between WWII and the end of the century, the differences in handwriting are like night and day.

But what does career profiling or coaching have to do with handwriting in the first place? If you have ever had your handwriting analyzed, you know that a trained expert can describe your key characteristics, traits, and behaviors with pinpoint accuracy. For some, this is just plain freaky.  For others, it is intriguing and they want to learn more. In short, handwriting is a proven, accurate assessment tool. If this is all new to you, you may feel skeptical. Let me convince you.

Handwriting analysis is a highly regarded skill in Europe, particularly Germany and France, where it first began.  Businesses often use it during the hiring process. But in the U.S. and Canada, it is still largely misunderstood or not even recognized as a viable assessment tool. Ignorance, however, doesn’t mean it’s not viable. Have your handwriting analyzed and see for yourself! See if an expert can glean your traits from your handwriting. Let me demonstrate in broad terms what handwriting analysis can tell us about groups of people – namely, generations.

The Generations Overview

The Silent Generation are those born between 1924 and 1945. This is probably your parents’ or grandparents’ generation. This group of adults has a distinctive handwriting style that depicts the characteristics of this generation. They use exclusively cursive writing. One significant aspect of cursive writing is that all the letters in a word link to the one next to it.  The bottom of each letter connects to the next with a gentle, curving line. This consistently connective writing tells much about the way the generation views each other, the world, and how things are accomplished.

In contrast, Generation Y falls into the most recent handwriting analysis group. Often called Millenials, their writing is marked exclusively by printing. Much of the reason for this decline is because of the rise of typing and the decrease in the necessity of cursive in everyday life. Some schools no longer teach cursive writing.

Bridging this gap are the Baby Busters and Baby Boomers. These generations have the most variety in writing style. They use both connective writing and print script (various forms of connective and disconnective writing). However, it is rare to find someone from the Baby Boomer generation that exclusively prints. There are some among the Baby Busters. So what does this say about each group? Of course, these are broad generalizations that certainly do not apply to each person in a generation. We are simply looking to see what conclusions we can draw from the fact that the older generation uses cursive, the middle uses a mix, and the younger uses printing.

The Silent Generation

The connective writing style of the Silent Generation says that this group thinks in terms of “us.” They feel connected to their peers and think like each other. There is a mutual understanding and a group-think. Therefore, they also understand each others’ needs, wants, and goals. An individual’s needs are woven into other’s needs. They understand that helping others achieve their wants and goals enables them to fulfill their own wants and goals. That is because they essentially want the same kind of things. The needs of the group is paramount. Personal needs are always subject to the filter of group needs.

As one would expect, the Silents attend church and serves on church committees. They participate in not one but multiple civic organizations within their lifetime. And as seniors typically do, they join hobby or leisure groups that share their interests.

As an example of the Silent culture, The Career Profiler recently became vice-president of a long-running garden club in her area. In looking through the historical records of the group, she found that every member held multiple positions during their tenure. But, even more significantly, if a member missed more than one meeting, their membership was dropped automatically. Reminders were never sent out before a meeting. Today, there is no one in the club under the age of 45. As you can imagine, the members are mostly Silents, plus a few Baby Boomers. There are no Busters or Millennials in the group at all. The conclusions we draw from this example should be taken with a grain of salt, given that older people are more likely to own a house and therefore have space for a personal garden, and leisure gardening is usually a hobby taken up by older people. But in general, the older generations take community responsibility very seriously and understand that if a group is to function well, everyone has to pitch in.

The progression from Silent to Boomer handwriting: 50’s already showcases a mix of print and cursive, though most letters are still connected or close together

Baby Boomer and Buster

It’s important to remember that generations are connected to the ones before and after them.  So as we move on to the Baby Boomer and Buster generations, remember that Boomers are the children of Silents, and their children are Millennials.  Boomers and Busters have the most variety in writing styles and in their work, thinking, and life styles.  Boomers and Busters are experimenters.  They explored all the following and more: 60’s mod styles, 70’s hippy lifestyles, 80’s achievement pursuits, and 90’s leisure living.  Within these eras were the high-flying financiers and the peace corp supporters, along with the 9-5ers and the druggies.  Their various handwriting styles reflect the variety of thinking and living styles.  

There are other distinctives too.  Silents raised their Boomer children in Sunday School, but most dropped out of church.  More than likely, they didn’t raise their Millennial children in any religious tradition.  This generation gave up on commitments, not just to church but also to marriage.  More than any previous generation, this one divorced in ever increasing numbers, especially among those without strong, intergenerationally networked communities.  One reason Canadians file for less divorce than Americans is in part because of their more historically networked communities.  However, the fact that this generation had the gumption to break with community and work traditions means that they were able to trailblaze the Information Age.  Without this growing individualism and experimentation, the world as we know it would not exist.  Their life experiences greatly shaped the lives of their children, the Millenials.

The changes continue: the late Boomers mix print and cursive with more obvious spaces between words and letters, while some Busters opt for print only. Millenials, though still young, showcase a print style different than any of the others: not a hint of cursive, and larger spaces than ever

Millenials

Let’s jump to Millennials.  They have the exact opposite writing style of the Silent Generation. Their print-only style of writing says that their thinking is disconnected from others.  Every letter stands alone.  Every thought is about how to meet my needs, goals, and wants.  Much of their culture and lifestyle is a result of the way their parents raised them – in reaction to the Boomer/Buster experience of the world.

Millennials weren’t raised in community; Boomers and Busters didn’t spend much time in intergenerational, interconnected network of people. Thus, their children didn’t experience this either. A network like this includes friends and peers, as well as people they don’t necessarily like.  A community is multi-generational, sharing a sense of history and a common goal.  Most Millennials weren’t even raised by two parents!  So it’s not surprising that Millennials have an aversion to intimacy and a complete lack of cultural understanding of community.  To them, community is a gathering of friends or strangers in the same place at the same time.  They have no exposure to a multilayered, networked group of others.  Additionally, Millenials’ parents raised them with the ideals of individuality, creativity, and uniqueness.  This American feature of individualism has developed over time and is a defining feature of the younger generations.

Another part of the reason for that is this is that Millennials have, for the most part, not been raised in church.  Church is a community which naturally teaches the fundamentals of groupthink or democratic processes.  It functions completely at the will of the people, around a common value, to achieve a common goal.  Millennials’ parents threw out groupthink in the 60’s and 70’s, when individualism and building a unique identity prevailed.

THAB Confirms

The Highland Ability Battery confirms this generational thinking shift. One of the 19 test modules measures generalist vs. specialist thinking styles.  Generalists think like others.  Specialists, on the other hand, think uniquely and use words with meanings other than the masses might assume.  Within the last five years, test results have uncovered that Millennials scores significantly higher as specialists than as generalists – in a greater percentage than ever before in the history of the test.  As a result, they created a “student” version of the test which adjusts for this shift to comply with historical standards.

This is just a brief, general example of what handwriting tells us about people.  There are many more characteristics one can learn from a person through handwriting.  Find out what it could mean for your career by getting in touch with The Career Profiler.  She can analyze your handwriting and let you know how your personality characteristics affect your work.

We also have more blogs on handwriting analysis if you want to know more. Our next handwriting blog is a case study and why handwriting should matter to employers and managers.

Reviewed October 28, 2026

A natural aptitude is not the same thing as a job skill. You can have an ability that supports a career and still need to learn its tools, methods, standards and everyday tasks. Training and experience turn that potential into work you can execute properly.

Understanding your abilities helps you choose where to invest that effort. The next question is practical: Which skills does the career I want require, and how will I acquire and demonstrate them?

Separate ability, skill and experience

In the Highlands framework, aptitudes are underlying natural ability patterns, while skills are acquired through learning and practice. The publisher’s explanation of abilities and skills makes that distinction and considers both in the wider context of career choice.

• Ability: A pattern identified through assessment that helps explain how you approach particular kinds of tasks.
• Skill: Something you have learned to do, such as diagnosing a fault, preparing an estimate or using a particular tool.
• Experience: Opportunities to apply those skills, encounter variations and build judgment.

A score does not certify that you can perform a job. Equally, limited experience does not establish that you lack the ability to learn its skills. Use the assessment to inform your plan rather than treat it as a permanent verdict on your options.

Interested in mechanics, but new to the work?

Imagine someone who is interested in mechanics and has relevant spatial strengths, but grew up without opportunities to work on engines or equipment. Those strengths do not supply knowledge of diagnostic procedures, components, tools or safe working methods.

A school program, apprenticeship or suitable supervised role can provide the missing instruction and practice. Interest gives the person a reason to pursue the work; ability informs the fit; training develops the skills needed to do it.

Family background can affect early exposure, but it does not fix the learning opportunities available later. The useful question is where to get that experience now.

Project planning needs field knowledge

A similar distinction applies in real estate development or construction management. Concept Organization concerns arranging information into a logical sequence; it does not automatically teach someone the sequence of a construction project.

To plan actual work, you need to understand the tasks, dependencies, trades and constraints involved. Experience helps you recognize which steps must precede others and when an apparently sensible plan will fail in practice.

A natural way of organizing information can support that learning. It does not replace learning the field.

Build a route from beginner to capable worker

1. Choose a target role. Find out what people actually do in it, rather than rely on a broad career title.
2. Identify the required preparation. Check the relevant education, training, credentials and practical skills.
3. Compare the requirements with your experience. Separate skills you already use from those you have not yet had an opportunity to learn.
4. Find a starting point. Consider an apprenticeship, course, assistant role, internship or other supervised entry route appropriate to the work.
5. Progress to more demanding tasks. Seek instruction, feedback and opportunities that build the next level of skill.
6. Show what you can do. Use appropriate examples, qualifications, work records or references to demonstrate your preparation.

For students, relevant experience during high school can be valuable where the work is age-appropriate and properly supervised. Adults changing direction can use the same progression. You do not have to have discovered the field as a child to begin developing its skills.

Employer tests and career assessments differ

Some employers use job-relevant aptitude or skills assessments and provide training. Ask what preparation a particular employer expects and what training it actually offers; do not assume every company will train a new hire from the beginning.

The Highlands Ability Battery serves personal career and educational guidance. Its publisher’s terms state that it is not normed for employers to predict job performance or screen applicants for hiring. It should not be presented as an employer selection test.

The military has its own assessment system. The ASVAB includes verbal, mathematics, science/technical and spatial domains, including knowledge-based subtests. It is not simply a measure of untouched natural ability. Military specialty selection considers test results alongside other requirements and service needs, as described in the BLS military careers overview.

Choose the work, then plan the preparation

Skills development is most useful when it serves a direction that fits you. Your ability patterns are part of that choice, together with your interests, work style, internal needs and external circumstances. Read how those factors fit together and why driving abilities need an outlet.

Find My Profile Package to compare assessment coverage and debrief formats. First, buy and complete the package you choose. Each assessment includes consultation, using the package’s available video-plus-consultation or consultations-only format.

Decide your next step at the final profile consultation. If you want further support with Targeting or Landing, both phases involve coaching sessions with Marjorie Wall Hofer. Together, you agree on a plan and the scope of that further work.

The Career Profiler owns TestEts. Marjorie is the consultant for clients coming through this website. If you have questions before choosing a package, request a free 30-minute introductory consultation.

Start here: Aptitudes, Abilities and Skills: Start with Highlands explains why I begin with natural abilities before planning skill development.

Brain Health Part II: Career Choice

In the last post we looked at how developing your brain’s gray matter can help in your career success. In this blog we’ll talk about how a well-developed brain makes a career choice.

It seems logical that a brain developed to its greatest capacity gives one the freedom to choose from a greater number of careers, and to be successful in those careers. Unfortunately, the reality is that people with great brain capacity often find that they are not successful or happy. Multi-talented people find career choice difficult. They can feel pigeonholed in only one career or one skill set. One career choice shuts off another, despite the person being capable of doing both. Multi-talented people often get stuck, not becoming really successful in anything. Career coaching is important for these kinds of people because it can be hard to find a career that uses their multiple talents. Without a career that uses all of their capacity, they end up feeling underused or undervalued. Furthermore, if they choose a career that doesn’t utilize their driving abilities, they will not be successful or happy.

Those with great brain capacity can have trouble with career choice

Are you one of these people? You know you are talented, bright, and driven. But you just can’t find the right job for you?

It’s hard to find a career that uses all of a well-developed person’s many abilities, interests, and aptitudes. But The Career Profiler can help find a field or fields in which you can take advantage of your great potential. Real estate development, visual arts, and film directing are all careers that utilize many aptitudes, skills, and facets of talent. Some multi-talented folks pursue different careers and switch it up every few years.

An Example

A client of The Career Profiler graduated from MIT and taught in academia for several years. He worked with both the hard and soft sciences. Then he worked in South America for several years, then was a legal counselor for an oil shipment company. He also designed his own house and does contracting work for other building projects. In his spare time, he participates intensely in recreational sports like tennis and downhill skiing.

Someone with all of these abilities and interests could never be satisfied staying in one place and doing one thing! Furthermore, a person with all of these gifts to share shouldn’t limit themselves to a mediocre job, or even one great job.

It can be daunting to plan on changing careers every few years, but it is possible! Get in touch with The Career Profiler to find your aptitudes, work on a career plan, or talk about how to develop your aptitudes. Don’t pigeonhole yourself! Work and live to your fullest potential! This is the best way to be successful and happy.

Brain Health Part I: Career Success

Are you concerned about your brain health as you age? Gretchen Reynolds, a physical education columnist for The New York Times, often writes about how learning a new sport as a midlife adult may be good for your brain. In fact, learning anything new produces positive benefits in the brain. But until recently, studies have only focused on higher cognitive learning in children. This study presents the need for adults to improve both physical and motor learning. And of course, this will affect your career!

Grey and white matter in the brain

How do different kinds of learning impact the brain? Physical learning develops gray matter in the motor control region of the brain. Language learning develops white matter in the language processing area. Familiar physical exercise, while beneficial to overall brain health, does not result in the same benefits as learning a new sport. This means your daily walk won’t necessarily cut it. Sedentary activities such as filling in crossword puzzles or playing video learning games have limited benefit on brain development.  

Brain Health and Your Career

Why does this matter to The Career Profiler? There are two main ways. The first is how brain capacity affects career success. The second is how high brain capacity affects career choice. This article will focus on the first. Greater success can be found in those careers with a well-developed brain.

For example, a 21-year-old man recently took the BullsEye Career profile package. He was raised without a television in his house. His mother, a preschool teacher, encouraged him to engage in non-screen activities like outdoor play. Much of his playtime included tinkering, building, music, reading, and journaling as required by his mother. In high school, he played all the team sports until injuries sidelined him.

Juggling is a great activity to improve brain health

He also earned top grades, becoming a valedictorian. Of all the people who have completed my BullsEye Career profile package, he scored the highest on the ability profile as a whole, if not the highest on all individual ability test modules. Even if he was smart to begin with, his activities, as we now know from motor and cognitive learning studies, no doubt expanded his brain capabilities.

The same is true when you learn a new physical exercise as an adult. Especially for second career applicants, picking up a new hobby like juggling or snowboarding might be a way to ensure your brain stays sharp for your next job. 

What’s a sport or activity that you want to pick up? Maybe this is an area that you need coaching in, either from a physical fitness coach or a career coach. The Career Profiler can help you identify your driving aptitudes and develop your capacity in the areas that you are already fit to expand in. Keep your  brain healthy by learning new things and working with a career coach to expand your potential.

Reviewed October 28, 2026

Some natural abilities feel like more than things you can do. They create a strong pull toward particular activities. In career profiling, these are important clues to the work you need opportunities to do, as well as the work you can perform well.

I explain these internal needs through a hunger-and-thirst analogy. Hunger prompts you to seek food; thirst prompts you to seek water. In a similar way, a strong driving ability can pull you toward activities that give it expression, even before you have words for that need.

The analogy describes the felt need for an outlet. It is not a medical explanation of hunger, anxiety or depression. Career profiling explores work needs and fit; it does not diagnose or treat a health condition.

What are driving abilities?

The Highlands Ability Battery identifies a group of five driving abilities. They concern different ways of reasoning, generating ideas and relating to the spatial world:

• Classification
• Concept Organization
• Idea Productivity
• Spatial Relations Theory
• Spatial Relations Visualization

The publisher explains these in What Are Driving Abilities? Your pattern matters: low, middle and high ranges all contribute information about suitable roles and responsibilities. The aim is not to collect the highest possible scores.

When an ability feels like a need

In my consulting work, a sufficiently strong ability can show up as a persistent need to use it. The phrase “press point” is a way to describe that pressure for expression. I use it to discuss the strength of a person’s need, rather than present it as a universal score cutoff or a clinical threshold.

When that need has little outlet, a person may describe restlessness, frustration or dissatisfaction with work. What looks like a lack of motivation may be a question worth exploring about the activities their day actually contains. The profile and consultation help examine that possibility alongside other explanations and circumstances.

Spatial visualization needs a tangible outlet

Spatial Relations Visualization is Highlands’ label for mentally manipulating three-dimensional objects. Highlands connects strength in this area with an orientation toward hands-on work or tangible results; see its explanation of spatial reasoning.

In practice, that outlet can take different forms: working with buildings, machinery, plants, physical systems or anatomy. The subject that attracts you and the kind of work you want to do still matter. A spatial ability does not prescribe one occupation.

Ask what a role actually lets you do. Will you work with the tangible subject, make or repair something, investigate a physical problem or see a concrete result? The job title alone may not tell you.

A different route to satisfying work

One college client I worked with had strong needs for hands-on work. The mathematics required for an engineering route presented a significant barrier for him at that stage. He was in a communications program, but it did not provide the kind of work he needed to do.

Leaving college was a difficult decision. He had connected a degree with being successful and had to reconsider what a successful route could look like for him.

He returned to practical work he already knew. Within three months, he had started his own sprinkler business. In his first year, he acquired 40 recurring clients. He was happier with the direction he had chosen and was building a successful business.

This is one client experience from my practice, with identifying details omitted. It illustrates the value of examining the route as well as the destination; it is not a promise that leaving college or starting a business produces the same outcome for someone else.

Find the outlet that fits the whole person

A driving ability identifies something important to consider, but it does not settle the entire career choice. Interests, work style, external needs and training requirements also need to fit. Read why natural abilities alone do not settle career satisfaction.

Sometimes the next step is a different role. Sometimes it is training, a trade, a degree or a change in the tasks your current job provides. A project outside work may also provide an outlet; the consultation explores whether that meets your needs or whether the work itself needs to change.

Understand your own pattern

Find My Profile Package to compare the assessments, reports and debrief formats. First, buy and complete your chosen package. Each assessment includes consultation, through the available video-plus-consultation or consultations-only format.

Decide your next step at the final profile consultation. You and Marjorie Wall Hofer can create a plan for the goal you choose. Targeting and Landing are possible next phases; both involve further coaching sessions with Marjorie, with the scope agreed together.

The Career Profiler owns TestEts, and Marjorie is the consultant for clients coming through this website. A separate free 30-minute introductory consultation clarifies the process and package choices before purchase.