Hack your commute: Take a test to get more insight into your working mind
Are you in the right profession, working in the role best suited to your skills? If you’re unsure there are a whole host of personality tests to help you figure out the right path to take.
For better or worse, some of you reading this will already know whether or not you’ve picked the right profession, or indeed the right specialism within it, but in any case are now in it for the long haul. Others, like our columnist Helen Tupper, have held a long-term ambition to ‘pivot’ their careers and use their skills to take on an entirely new challenge. But for those who have never quite been sure if there is a more suitable job out there for them, there are ways to help you reach that realisation – and it’s never too late.
There are a host of apps and websites that offer personality tests and quizzes designed to work out the profile you most closely fit, and then offer suggestions for careers that best suit your skills and preferences. Some also offer further, more focused analyses of your interaction styles and how you fit with different companies. Often these are based on established psychological models such as Myers-Briggs, which divides people into 16 personality types determined by four different dimensions; or the ‘big five’ (also known as ‘Ocean’, which stands for openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism).
The app Good & Co is one example, which begins with an 18-question quiz to determine your unique mix of strengths and gives a short summary description, then allows you to take further quizzes to analyse how you fit with particular companies, how you come across to others and what kind of coworker you are.
The website 16personalities.com offers another smartly designed test that tells you your personality type, then offers further resources such as tests and ebooks targeted at your profile, giving advice on the practical implications.
If you’re willing to devote 40 minutes to answering questions, the Psychology Today website offers a more involved test with a free short summary report at the end, or the option to buy a fuller analysis for $12.95 (it’s targeted at a US audience, but most questions are relevant across geographies).
