Anthea LeviSo many of us are, quite honestly, clueless about careers. Post-grad plans commonly loom large unless one is on a “pre-” track (pre-business, pre-med). For those of us pursuing less straightforward studies, it can be tough to know exactly where we aiming to end up professionally. Sure, we understand our interests and our hobbies; we’ve picked our majors and minors; we’ve added to our résumés to the best of our ability, trying out different internships to see what fields we may thrive in. And yet, some of us are left still deeply befuddled by what we career path we are best suit to follow. But maybe there is a bright side: there currently exists hundreds of online career tests that are meant to help us better understand ourselves and the fields that may be most appropriate for us. We realize this sounds like some sort of parody, but we figure the tests are worth a (albeit desperate) try.
It seems too obvious to say that knowing ourselves better is the key to knowing what we want from life. Maybe Seventeen Magazine was onto something with the monthly personality quizzes — career tests are similarly brief and easy-to-complete, only this time they’re helping us figure out our professional purposes, rather than the ever-pressing life question, “How Kissable Are You?”.
A simple Google search proves just how in-demand these quickie quizzes are these days. There are countless “career test” options online, each of which asks quiz-takers questions about how they live their life. Job Outlook, Career Steer, and iPersonic, all offered their own versions of vocational help. I took this test (it was part of my research, of course), which asked me questions like:
What kinds of projects do you like better? Ones that are well-defined, with specific goals and measures or ones that give you as many options as possible?
People sometimes say I’m: unwilling to change OR unable to make up my mind. (Choose one).
Other questions on the quiz (there were 32 in total) regarded my approach to deadlines, how–or if–I choose to advise and help others, and my pet peeves. The questions seemed mildly phony, but the results they produced were amusing. I most appreciated the quiz’s description of me (“You are an independent and original thinker with strong beliefs and personal integrity,”), but was less-than-thrilled with its proposed career paths: Financial Analyst?! I avoid math like the plague. The other career choices offered, HR Manager or Healthcare Administrator, were only slightly more conceivable.
We’ve pretty much boiled our opinion on career tests down to this: are these quizzes accurate? Probably (definitely) not. Are they worth 20 minutes of your life? Probably (definitely) yes. What else do you really have going on? If we had to guess, you’re probably watching this right now. Save yourself while you can.
Would you take a career test?
(Image via Life Spa)