By: Sara Melnick, Chief of Finance and Special Projects
Reading Time: 8 min.
Career inventories are assessments designed to help students learn more about themselves, what they like to do, maybe a little about what they’re “good” at doing, and ultimately provide some insight into the career pathways that might be a good fit based
on the results. Some more in-depth inventories can help students take the next steps to identify, based on inventory results, the college major required to enter that career, the postsecondary institutions that offer those majors, the earnings potential
for that career, and the job prospects for recent graduates in specific geographic regions.
Below we provide an overview of a few career assessments and platforms. Some NCAN member programs use the results of these assessments in the career advising they’re doing with their postsecondary students. We’ve divided the list into four overarching
areas, but the results of several of these assessments and inventories will offer a more comprehensive look into what careers might be a good fit for one’s personality, aptitudes, and interests.
It’s important to keep in mind that each type of inventory or assessment provides only one piece of a student’s career preference puzzle. Using the results presented by several types of inventories in tandem will provide a more comprehensive career roadmap
than using any one inventory on its own.
Interest Inventories
The results of interest inventories aim to provide information into a student’s preferred activities and tasks, which they tend to avoid, how they might prefer to perform their job, and preferences for work environments.
Students can use the results of their interest inventory to compare their interest with those of individuals already working in specific careers.
Career Cruising: This fee-based website provides comprehensive assessments to help users identify careers that match their interests and skills. Users start by taking assessments
to identify career matches based on their interests and skills and from there, they can begin to explore in-depth information on hundreds of occupations. The information on this site includes multimedia interviews, workplace photos, and sample
career paths. Career Cruising has a K-12 focused product as well called Xello which is also fee-based.
Strong Interest Inventory: Grounded in the research of John Holland, this inventory helps students identify their work personality by exploring their interests
in six broad areas: realistic, artistic, investigative, social, enterprising, and conventional, and then breaks down these areas into 30 sub-areas of interest that can be directly related to fields of study, careers, and leisure activities. The
individual results can rank the student’s top compatible occupations, be used to help select a college major, or encourage the student to explore careers by demonstrating how personal interests can relate to specific occupations.
MyNextMove/O*Net Interest Profiler: This test is supported by the U.S. Department of Labor and provides career suggestions based on interest tendencies. The tendencies determined
by this free assessment include investigative, social, enterprising, artistic, conventional, and realistic. The O*NET Interest Profiler is based on answers to 60 questions that have you rate various work activities from “strongly dislike” to “strongly
like”. O*Net is part of a much more comprehensive website that enables the user to take results from the interest survey and use that to explore relevant careers, the level of education and major required to enter that career, institutions that
offer those majors/degrees, earnings potential by geographic area, etc.
Personality Assessments
The results of personality assessments may be used to help a student assess the degree to which their personal characteristics or emotional tendencies might align with a specific career. For example, an introvert
might not be as well suited to a career in public relations as is an extrovert.
Myers Briggs: Grounded in the psychological theories of Carl Jung, Myers Briggs categorizes individuals into one of 16 different personality
types that indicate preferences for how someone energizes, perceives information, makes decisions, and lives their life. Results of the Myers Briggs may provide insight into the type of work environment, occupation, etc. is best suited to your
student.
123 Test: This test helps identify careers and work environments that best match an individual’s personality. The assessment uses images instead of questions, each image portraying
work linked with a specific personality type. Individuals provide a yes or no response regarding the particular image, indicating whether they prefer doing the kind of work or not. This assessment uses the Holland Code personality types (see below).
The results of this assessment provide the student with a list of professions and occupations that fit their specific preferences or personality.
Kiersey Temperament Sorter: This personality assessment is based on Keirsey Temperament Theory, which divides people into four temperaments: guardian, idealist, rational, and artisan. The assessment
measures how people communicate and what their actions tend to be. The outcomes of this assessment may help a student align their career choices with their innate strengths and preferences. Some versions of the assessment provide suggested career
matches.
Career Aptitude
Career aptitude tests are used to measure the user’s career aptitude and talents. The outcomes can be used by a job seeker to provide insight into the careers that best fit their strengths and interests. Aptitude tests
can also be used by employers to make decisions about hiring or promoting employees.
Holland Code Career Test: The Holland Code assessment is grounded in the research and theories of John Holland who believed that people/personalities AND jobs/careers
can be grouped into six types: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional (RIASEC). The assessment identifies a student’s basic personality type and matches it with relevant occupations. Note that here are several
career assessments grounded in the research and theory of John Holland, including inventories found (for free) on the O*Net website.
MAPP: The Motivational Appraisal Personal Potential (MAPP) Career Test provides career suggestions based on your student’s personality and helps determine where their career motivations lie.
Based on the results of the assessment, the user will receive a limited list of suggestions of jobs that might be a good fit, along with the education needed and career outlook (MAPP uses the O*Net job list to identify these “good fit” jobs and
other related data). Basic results will be provided for free but more robust results can be obtained through the fee-based version of MAPP.
YouScience: YouScience is a fee-based assessment that identifies what students like and what they do well, and then displays a list of careers that might be a good fit based on the results.
Students can access detailed information about various careers, such as an overview of “a day in the life,” salary/earnings potential, and the education/major/credential required to gain entry to a career.
CliftonStrengths: This fee-based assessment identifies an individual’s natural talents (aka strengths). Students are encouraged to use the
results of this assessment to capitalize on their strengths and becoming better at what they’re already great at, rather than working on or “fixing” their weaknesses. The results are not necessarily aligned with specific careers or industries,
but rather help a student think about the type of job/career that will allow them to make use of their identified strengths/natural talents.
Work Values
Work values assessments can help students identify their beliefs about what is important or desirable – in life and in a job – and provide a template for considering how a career or a workplace aligns. Work values reflect
specific preferences for work environments that are important to a person’s satisfaction with their job. Again, work values are just one factor for a student to consider during a career exploration process.
Work Values Inventory: The fee-based WVI assessment measures six workplace values – achievement,
independence, support, relationships, working conditions, and recognition – and can help students find a job that is a good fit for their work values. Results can then be used to search the WVI Occupations Index which lists more than 1,300 jobs
according to work value and required education level. This assessment is aligned with the Work Styles Assessment which assesses the user’s work-related personality traits.
Work Values Matcher: This assessment asks students to respond to statements that define their ideal job and ultimately, identify what is most important
to them, or what they value in their work. The results aim to help students choose a career/employer/workplace that matches their values. This assessment is found on the Careeronestop website, managed by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment
and Training Administration. The Careeronestop website offers a very comprehensive set of career exploration, self-assessments, job search resources, resume writing, and other career
development tools.
MyPlan.com: This free values assessment asks students to rank different aspects of work that represent six underlying work values grounded in the Work Values Inventory described
above. Results of the assessment show a score that indicate the relative importance of each work value. In addition to the scores, the results also provide a list of occupations rank-ordered according to how well they match the personal work values
– the higher the rank, the more a job agrees with the student’s work values, and the more likely they are to be satisfied in that job. This values assessment is one component of the more comprehensive MyPlan website that also includes other assessments, as well as major, college, and job search tools.
This blog is part of NCAN’s Career Advising for College Students series, funded by the Scheidel Foundation.
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