Five Personality Tests for Career Switchers

(MoneyWatch) 
To make a successful career change, you have to know what type of career is going to suit your personality. Psychometric tests are a quick, convenient way of personality typing-- getting an idea of which specific personality group you fall into in terms of skill sets, ambitions and aspirations. Once you know, it can be easier to assess what type of career might be suited to you.

Personality-led psychometric tests are not to be confused with the tests employers use to test candidates' ability. These are usually taken in exam-like conditions and involve numerical and verbal reasoning exercises that assess a candidate's ability to do the job.

Tests such as OPQ32 are used by managers and businesses to evaluate behavioural style, but there are many free online personality psychometric tests that you can take yourself, in your own time. Here are five of the most popular tests doing the rounds at the moment:

1. Jung Typology Test Personality typing involves classifying the individual according to four criteria also used in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: extroversion/introversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, judging/perceiving. Different combinations of the criteria determine a type. For instance, if you are an Extrovert Intuition Feeling Judging, you are imaginatively called an EIFJ. According to which type you are, the test not only feeds back a list of suitable career options, but also some educational institutions that can give you the relevant skills training.
2. Career Psychometrics: 'How to Land your Ideal Job' You have two minutes and 45 seconds to answer a short series of questions asking you to what extent you have certain personality traits. After you've completed it, you get a free personality report that explicitly tells you not only what type of job is for you, but also what type of job isn't for you. The catch is you have to give them your email address to get the free report so you may start getting spammed.
3. Finding Potential: Individuals' Personality Questionnaire This test takes around 15 minutes to complete and gives you a 15 page report that shows you the personality traits you scored higher and lower on; gives you a detailed breakdown of these traits; and then matches work preferences and possible jobs to you according to whether you scored high or low on each particular trait.
4. SimilarMinds.com: What Career Suits Me? This is slightly different in that, for some reason, it first asks you what your 'current or desired' career is before you take the test. It then gives you a list of statements and you have to indicate to what degree each statement is true of you. In the results it categorises you as a certain type of person, such as an 'Idealist', and then gives you a list of possible professions. Of course, one of these professions is the one you put down as your desired career.
5. PersonalityType.com: Discover Your Perfect Career Quiz This uses the same criteria as the Jung Typology Test, except you yourself have to decide whether you are an extrovert or introvert, sensor or intuitive, etc. by reading bullet point descriptions of each pair of qualities and then picking which of the two qualities is most like you. After you've chosen from the four categories, the test identifies your personality type as the conventional Jung test does and then gives you a list of suitable careers.

Obviously none of us are going to choose our next career exclusively on the back of a traffic-coaxing online test, but they are useful tools for seeing if you'd really be suited for that career move that's caught your imagination. And if you have no idea what you'd like to do, it's a fun way of getting a few suggestions you might never have thought of by yourself.

(Photo:blackplastic, CC2.0)