You’ve probably taken a test like the ones we offer before – a personality test like the Myers Briggs, or a career or aptitude test. Have you taken one of these tests before and thought, “What’s the big deal? It’s just a bunch of letters or words that describe me?” Then you have not yet grasped the full meaning of such an assessment. You can benefit greatly from a consultation.
Let’s look at an example. Maybe you’ve gotten test results, or been told by someone else, that you are an introvert. What did they mean by that? If a person said it to you they might have misused the word and actually meant that you are a shy or quiet person. If this was your result on a test, however, the meaning would be completely different. In a personality test report, introversion is a word that describes how you harness energy. That is a big difference! A lot of people come to the Career Profiler disagreeing with
A word is not just a word – test results use specific words to mean specific things
their test results. This is because they don’t understand the way the test is using such words. It is only after the labels are fully clarified that they admit that the results are indeed accurate. That is why consultations are so important.
Labels are single terms within which a host of meanings are held. As with the word “introvert,” one can pull out more than 25 behavioral descriptors. That doesn’t even include all the synonyms. Now, think for a moment: how many behavioral descriptors can you think of? And how many synonyms for all of those descriptions? Now you can begin to understand the breadth and depth of knowledge necessary for analyzing a person’s assessment results. How can you know what each word means and, more importantly, how to improve someone’s life given those descriptions? It is nearly impossible to do without adequate training. That’s where a competent, trusted career coach comes into play.
Understanding the specific terms used by different test publishers is just one reason why you need a coach consultation. Find out what else is missing from test results and why you need a consultation to get past them in our next blog.