FIVE RULES OF CAREER ASSESSMENTS

To keep in mind when approaching career assessments in general, and online assessments in particular:

• Treat all assessments as suggestive, only.

Assessments have one great mission and purpose: to give you ideas you had not thought of, and suggestions worth following up on.  But if you ask more of them - if you ask them to absolutely tell you what to do with your life - you are asking too much.  On many online (and offline) assessments, if you answer even two questions inaccurately, you will get completely different results and recommendations.  You should there fore take all test results not with just a grain of salt, but with a barrel.

• Take several assessments, rather than just one.

You will geta much better picture of your preferences and profile, not to mention career ideas, from three or more assessments, rather than just one.

• Don't let assessments make you forget that you are absolutley unique.

All assessments tend to dea lin categories, so they end up saying you are an "ENFP" or an "AES", or you are a "Blue".  You are lumped with a lot of other people, as in a tribe - and sometimes it is the wrong tribe.  Just remember, you are "a unique job seeker seeking to conduct a unique job hunt, by identifying a unique career and then connecting with a unique company or organization, that you can uniquely help or serve".  Without some hard thinking about how you are unique, assessments become just "a flytrap for the lazy," as job expert Mary Ellen Mort puts it.

• Consult a qualified professional regarding your assessment results.

If you do not understand (or do not like) the results you get from any of the online assessments then consult a qualified professional to help you make sense of the information and further assist in any interpretation.  Remember, you are not alone in this process so utilize the resources available to you.

• Don't force online assessments on your friends.

If online assessments do help you, do not become a "Career Assessment Evangelist" and try to force all your fiends and family to take such assessments.  People are very skittish about assessments.  For example, some people dislike "forced choice questions" where they must pick between two choices that are equally bad, in their view.  Others do not like questions about how they would behave in certain situations, because they tend to pick how they wish they behaved, rather than how in fact they actually do.  And some people hate all assessments (tests).  Period.  end of story.  So, trying to force these assessments on your family or best friends could lead to your premature demise.  Be gentle: the life you save may be your own.

Adapted from resources on http://www.jobhuntersbible.com/

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