Take Assessment for Career-Change Guidance?

Career change is a big step, and while I believe personality tests have a place in the process, I believe you first need to spend some reflective time with yourself, examining your likes and dislikes. You also need to decide if you are simply bored with your job — or bored with your current career path. Literally sit down with a pen and a piece of paper and make two columns — likes and dislikes — and start putting activities into each column. Don’t just use work activities — include everything, from hobbies to volunteering. The key to this activity is to rediscover who you are and what you really like — to find what energizes you.

Once you have a better feel for yourself, then consider taking one or more assessment tests. Each one is different; some of these tests will give you results that give insight to your work or management style, others will show careers for people of similar types, and others will simply give you insight into who you are. For established job-seekers, my current favorite is CareerMaze (which you can find at CareerMaze.com). The results from this assessment include both a specific, career-relevant discussion of your workplace personality and a list of job types compatible with your personality. For high school or college students, I recommend the Jackson Vocational Interest Survey (JVIS). The JVIS accurately measures your interests, showing how they relate to the worlds of study and work, and mapping out your route to an interesting career (and you can find it at JVIS.com).

If you do decide to make a career change, then your next steps are identifying your transferable skills and accomplishments. Transferable skills are skills you have acquired during any activity in your life — jobs, classes, projects, parenting, hobbies, sports, virtually anything — that are transferable and applicable to what you want to do in your next job. General categories of transferable skills include: communications; research and planning; human relations; organization, management, and leadership; and work survival.

Once you decide on a new career path, you MUST immediately begin building network contacts in your new field.

Finally, consider reviewing all the career change resources available at Quintessential Careers.