Career Exploration
Career Exploration is simply learning about various occupations and their "fit" with your unique career preferences, e.g. the skills, interests and values you want satisfied by your career. Ideally, you engage in career exploration during or after identifying your career preferences through self-assessment. Our district uses a great program called Xello. Students are encouraged to take full advantage of this tool!
In addition to Xello, below are some great websites and articles that will help you explore career opportunities. Information taken from https://www.thebalancecareers.com/free-career-aptitude-tests-2059813
Free Career Aptitude Tests
The following tests are available free online and can be a good start to identifying your next career.
123 Career Aptitude Test
This popular aptitude test can help you gain insight into the careers that best fit your personality.2 You can take the test in minutes by viewing sets of pictures that show specific work activities. You’ll choose the activities that appeal to you the most and those you aren’t interested in to learn about the type of work environments and occupations that suit you best. Plan on spending five to 10 minutes to complete the test.
Career Explorer
CareerExplorer is a free platform for users to assess their interests, personality types, abilities, career values, and preferred work and social environments in order to find matches that will lead to satisfying careers.3 The assessment suggests careers after you respond to a series of questions, and it will take about 30 minutes to complete.
There's detailed information available on each of the suggested career options. In addition, users can browse occupations by clusters such as health and nutrition, law, arts and entertainment, animals, food and drink, politics and law, sports, travel, music, engineering, and science.
Career One Stop Interest Assessment
CareerOneStop’s Interest Assessment is a quick and easy way to get a list of careers that might be a good fit for your interests.4 It will take about five minutes to answer 30 questions about what you like to do—and what you don’t like.
After you complete the assessment, you’ll get a list of careers that are a match, with information on salary, educational requirements, and job outlook. For the careers that interest you the most, you’ll be able to review more information about the job and how to get a career started.
Career One Stop Values Matcher
Work values are what a person believes is most important about their work. It could be finding a high-paying position, working as part of a team, working independently, or working in a job helping others.
Use CareerOneStop’s Work Values Matcher tool to find careers and employers that match your personal values.5 The test asks questions about different aspects of a job or workplace to help you find your ideal work environment. It only takes a few minutes to complete by sorting cards in order of what’s most important to you.
Career One Stop Skills Matcher
CareerOneStop’s Skills Matcher enables users to assess the skills they want to incorporate into their careers.6 You will rate basic skills such as reading, writing, speaking, scientific reasoning, and critical thinking, as well as more specialized social, technical, analytical, computer, problem-solving, and resource management skills, to find careers that are a good match.
Keirsey Temperament Sorter
The Keirsey Temperament Sorter assessment helps you understand your personality type and discover what type of temperament you have.7 Test results suggest a predominant personality type, including Artisan, Guardian, Rational, or Idealist. Your temperament influences career satisfaction, job search strategies, and job performance.
It will take 15-20 minutes to complete the assessment. A free description of your profile will be provided with an option to purchase the full report.
O*NET Interests Profiler
My Next Move’s O*NET Interest Profiler is administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. Users take a 60-question interest inventory that yields a profile of interest tendencies, including six areas: Realistic, Investigative, Social, Enterprising, Conventional, and Artistic.8
You will see a list of careers related to each cluster and will then be able to sort those careers into five job zones representing different levels of preparation, ranging from little job preparation to extensive preparation. The site also has extensive career information related to a variety of careers.
Personality Tests
Online personality tests measure your intelligence or aptitude, inventory your skills, and assess your ability to succeed in a career. Some are as simple as selecting colors you like and don't like. With others, you'll need to answer a number of specific questions.
Personality tests can be useful for showing you what kind of career you might want. They also can show you what skills make you a strong candidate for a job.
Once you know your skills, you can highlight them on your resume and cover letters.
Some tests are free, while others cost money. Be sure to research the cost of a test before doing it. Some can be done online, while others require a career counselor to interpret them.
For example, the Typology Central Jung Personality Test is a free personality test that combines two systems for evaluating personality type—Jungian Cognitive Functions and Personality Dichotomies. After you take the test, you'll get a report that outlines your temperament.
Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the most well-known, authoritative personality test available in the psychology and human resources community. It assesses your personality type and explores career options. If you're a college graduate, check to see if your career office offers no-cost testing for alumni. Otherwise, review these options for taking the assessment either online or in-person.
This test categorizes people into 1 of 16 personality types. With a series of questions, the test determines whether you gravitate toward extroversion or introversion, sense or intuition, thinking or feeling, and judging or perceiving.
Here's a quick guide to understanding the four categories within the Myers-Briggs test:
- Extroversion (E) or Introversion (I): This is about how you get your energy. Do you turn inward or outward for sources of energy?
- Sense (S) or Intuition (N): Which one you gravitate toward reveals how you perceive and absorb information. People who get an S result are more likely to use past experience and common sense to evaluate situations, while the intuition-focused readily see the big picture and patterns.
- Thinking (T) or Feeling (F): With this personality trait, your decision-making style is revealed. Thinkers are guided by logic and common sense, while feelers may rely on values feelings. For feeling types, the decision-making process may be guided by how a decision would affect others.
- Judging (J) or Perceiving (P): This last piece of the personality type reveals lifestyle preferences, or how you like to live your life. Judging types are organized and comfortable working within rules and framework. You can count on someone of this type having a five-year plan. Perceiving types are more likely to prefer a flexible environment, adapting plans as needed.
Test questions reveal whether you are an ISTP (that's Introversion, Sense, Thinking, Perceiving) an ENFJ (that's Extroversion, Intuition, Feeling, Judging), or one of the 14 other possibilities.