Throughout your career you may be faced with some exciting opportunities but fear of change may stop you from taking up such an opportunity. This will then leave you stuck in a rut that gets deeper and deeper and even more difficult to get out of and when you finally make the decision to get out of this rut, you have no idea what direction to take or how to take it – but thankfully there are tools to help you change career.
The key is to begin with a positive attitude and don’t jump at the first thing that comes along as this may turn out just to be a short term solution that gets you out of your career rut now but very soon find yourself back in there. Take time to assess your skills and figure out what it is you really want to do. There are lots of low cost tools and techniques available to help you figure out which direction to take your career and I am going to highlight a few here which I regularly use with clients.
- The MAPP (Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potential) career assessment tool.
This is an online career assessment test which has been used by over 7 million people worldwide. It has undergone extensive validity and reliability testing by psychologists which show that not only is it reliable but also consistent over time. It is a 15 minute test with 71 questions each with 3 optional answers. You choose the one you most prefer, the one you least prefer and leave one blank – simple!
You see your results immediately and they are scored against 900 jobs so you can see jobs that are the best fit for you along with the educational requirement.
MAPP has received a lot of positive feedback from careers professionals worldwide. You can try it out for yourself here for free by clicking on the image . 
- Strengths Finder
Identifying your strengths is just the one small step in showing that you are the right candidate for the job but many people struggle to list their strengths. The thing is that it has been proven that by focusing on your strengths, you are 6 times more likely to be engaged in your job and 3 times more likely to believe that you have an excellent quality of life in general! This is where Strengths Finder comes in.
Strengths Finder is based on Gallops 40 year study of human strengths which show that people have far more potential for growth when they spend time developing their strengths instead of trying to improve their weaknesses. It helps you to uncover your top 5 talents and rediscover your strengths before looking at ways that you can apply those strengths.
I use this frequently with clients, not only to help them figure out what it is they want to do but it is really useful when completing job applications.
- Holland Codes
The Holland Codes or the Holland Occupational Themes (RIASEC refers to a theory of careers and vocational choice based upon personality types. Each letter or code stands for a particular “type”: Realistic (Doers), Investigative (Thinkers), Artistic (Creators), Social (Helpers), Enterprising (Persuaders), and Conventional (Organizers).
Holland’s research shows that personalities seek out and flourish in career environments where they ‘fit’ and that jobs and career environments are classifiable by the personalities that flourish in them. Holland also wrote that the choice of a vocation is an expression of personality. While Holland suggests that people can be categorized as one of six types, he also argues that a six-category scheme built on the assumption that there are only six kinds of people in the world is unacceptable on the strength of common sense alone. But a six category scheme that allows a simple ordering of a person’s resemblance to each of the six models provides the possibility of 720 different personality patterns!
- Myers Briggs type testing
The purpose of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI®) personality inventory is to make the theory of psychological types described by C. G. Jung understandable and useful in people’s lives. We all have a personality which can be expressed as a code with four letters. Myers Briggs identified 16 personality types and the goal of knowing about personality type is to understand and appreciate differences between people. As all types are equal, there is no best type. There are many online versions of the Myers Briggs type test and completing one of the tests can help you identify jobs that suit your personality type.
What you do at work can seriously affect your whole life. It affects your money, relationships, health, well-being and confidence. If your job isn’t all that you want it to be, then you need to take action now.
While I recommend you use any of the above tools, I still believe that it is important to spend time discussing the results to see if they do in fact meet with your values, motivated skills and strengths in order for you to be more open to considering alternatives if you are to ensure your career success.
Then there is the fact that I still believe that there are way too many factors about an individual that contribute to career choice that career tests cannot fully capture but the above do provide a good base on which to begin a discussion.
If you do try out any of the above, please let me know how you got on by adding a comment below or email me, anne@power-to-change to schedule an appointment to discuss your results.
