Navigating your Career Comeback: Harnessing the Power of Assessments for a Successful Career Pivot
May 23, 2023
Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and visualize yourself on your first day returning to the type of role you had before you started your career break. What is your first reaction? If your heartrate is rising, you're feeling dread creep in, or you start to think "Maybe returning to the workforce isn't such a good idea", perhaps it's time to consider a career pivot.
Returning from a career break is an excellent time for a career pivot, especially if you're looking for more flexibility, or to grow in different ways. But, it can also be daunting to know where to begin. In our previous post, we shared some exercises you can use to look inward. Today, we're sharing another excellent tool you can use to get some external data points about yourself to aid in your exploration….
Career and personality assessments can be insightful and thought-provoking tools when exploring the next step in your career. These tools typically ask a series of questions, analyze your responses based on a specific methodology, and result in data that provide insights into the types of responsibilities or jobs that may be a fit for your personality, skills, and strengths.
There are a variety of assessments out there that focus on different things, so it may be helpful to explore a few different assessments to glean the information and insights that you need. Here are a few of our favorites to get you started!
What it is: This assessment asks 60 questions where you rate your level of interest in a variety of different job functions/tasks to provide you top career interests. From there, you can select how much preparation and education you have or would like to pursue in the future and the ONet Interest Profiler will provide a list of jobs that fit your interests and preparation/education.
Time for assessment: 15-30 minutes
Cost: Free
What it is: This assessment provides a series of 60 statements that you rank depending on how true each statement is for you. Once you complete the assessment, it will provide you with a personality type (similar to the Myers Briggs), and the ways that your type shows up in friendships, relationships, parenthood, and the workplace. It also provides some general career suggestions to explore for your type.
Time for assessment: 15 – 30 minutes
Cost: Free for the general assessment, which is pretty comprehensive – however – there is a $19 paid upgrade that allows access to some specific career-related assessments to dive deeper into your type.
What it is: This assessment asks 177 questions and provides insights into your greatest strengths and how they show up in life and work. It will help you understand your areas of excellence and your blind spots and may help you learn more about the person you are and how you work best.
Time for assessment: 30 minutes – 1 hour
Cost: $59.99
The trick to taking these assessments is to be as honest as possible and follow each of the instructions. They are all designed a bit differently and provide specific instructions to give you the most accurate results. Keep in mind that these are data points to aid in your exploration – if you have questions about how to use your assessment results most effectively, feel free to reach out to us via our Career Concierge, or share your question in the comments. Happy exploring!
Hopefully it brings about some new, exciting insights and career possibilities you haven't considered.
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