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Hint:
Signup with CareersPortal and create your own personal Career File. You can then store the results of any assessments you complete into your CareerFile (use the Career Pad App) by simply pasting in the results. This way you can keep a handy record of your work.
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Self assessment is the process of gathering information about yourself in order to help you make decisions based on a good self-understanding. It is the first step of the Career Planning process and is often conducted with the help of a Career Guidance professional.
Career self assessment is designed to assess those attributes of a person that matter for a successful and fulfilling career. There are many such attributes, and so there are many self assessment tools.
Many of these tools are available online. Some are free, others require payment before you can receive the results of the test.
In all cases, tests are best used to assist you in gaining clarity about yourself. They are starting points only, as several tests are needed to build a picture big enough to represent you well.
Some of the attributes used for career self assessment are discussed below.
Choosing a career direction that takes into account the sort of things you are interested in makes good sense. This ensures that you will be motivated as you have a natural inclination already in a particular area.
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| You can learn about career interests here: |
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| In addition to the online interest tests mentioned below, you can take the Careers Portal Interest-Profiler to measure the relative strengths of your interests. You will need to login to take this test as your results will be kept for you in your Career File. |
| Go to the CareersPortal Interest-Profiler here: |
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Online Examples:
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Irish based occupational matching programme from FAS. Suggests careers and general career areas baesd on an individual's personal and work interests. Also contains descriptions of over 700 careers. Free, Registration required for matching only. |
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Having the right personality for the job can help enormously. Finding an occupation that 'fits' your personality sound like it should be easy, except when we consider that 'personality' is a very complex thing to measure!
There are many personality theories, and some have been adapted for use to guide occupational choice. In general, personality self assessments are probabily better for personal understanding than for occupation selection, yet they can provide added depth of information from which to refine your choices.
You can take our free personality test when you login to your Career File (signup required). The results of this test may help you to be aware of your strengths and characteristics, which can be used to help you with your choice of career direction.
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| Go to the CareersPortal Personality-Profiler here: |
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Online Examples: |
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Typefocus offers a personality test based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Full version requires payment, but a good free version is available here. |
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Good introduction to the idea of personality types, quick, fun and useful. |
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The most popular personality test of all - now free online with a brief report (full reports have to be purchased). Good range of related resources also available on this friendly 'American' site. Free, Registration required. |
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We all value different things - some of us value independance over security, or money over creativity. Being clear about what you value will help you select an occupation or employer that will allow you to express yourself best.
Value self assessments measure how important different values are to you. There are no definitive tests as values can be very personal, so tests often measure different values.
Online Examples:
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Provided by Stewart, Cooper & Coon, this test identifies core values and allows you to sort them into a prioritised list. No registration, Free. |
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The Values Test can help you learn more about your underlying work needs and motivations, and can help you decide what is important to you in a job. Registration required, Free. |
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Just about all occupations are characterised by a particular set of skills. We often associate the idea of skills to specific technical activities, like fine eye-hand coordination, or problem solving. However there are a range of life skills which are equally important, and often overlooked.
We all have valuable skills we may be unaware of. Skill based self assessments help us to focus on those skills we may have, and identify those we are weak in.
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You can learn more about career skills here: |
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Online Examples:
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This popular and effective exercise focuses on those special skills we are really good at and which we love using – our 'prime skills'. |
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A job exploration tool which aims to help you identify your skills, motivations and interests and then to match yourself to relevant job types. Designed for at College students. (Registration required) |
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Paper Based Assessments
You can download a number of self assessments from the links below.
Skills:
Use the exercise on this downloadable worksheet to discover the most sought after skills needed to get jobs in the modern workplace. By rating yourself on these skills, you can see where your strengths and weaknesses may lie. Then, you can look for opportunities to develop and practice your underdeveloped skills.
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Download:
Worksheet - Career Skills Self-Assessment
[pdf - 540Kb, 4 pages] |
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Career Interests
Use the exercise on this downloadable worksheet to identify where your interests lie. This exercise takes no more than 10 min to complete and can help identify what career interest groups you are most interested in.
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Download:
Worksheet - Career Interests Self-Assessment
[pdf - 97Kb, 1 page] |
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Values
This brief exercise helps to clarify your values according to six commonly used categories.
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Download:
Worksheet - Values Self-Assessment
[pdf - 145Kb, 2 pages] |
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