Values-based career selector

[Adelina]

in high school, I saw several career selection quizzes being used by tutors in my princeton review class.
meyers-briggs type and other personality tests and inventories are also used sometimes for career/industry selection..

someone should also write one that is simply values based,
just a list of values to select those that you resonate most strongly with,
and see in corresponding industry and position those values and traits match.


also, perhaps in the future, some kind of aptitude can be determined in childhood? I wonder if our core traits and natural tendencies are all present at birth. something like that book, The Giver.

[Holistic Star]

Interesting idea but not sure how it would work in practice.

You can show love, intergrity, loyalty, innovation, conservativeness, risk taking etc in any job.

You could be a journalist with the highest standards of intergrity and commitment to truth, or you could be a journalist and write for the gutter press. Same role, different values.

You could have the highst standards of integrity and commitment to truth and be a scientist, police officer, eco-campaigner, author, team leader, school teacher, therapist, librarian etc all widely different ways of expressing the same value.

You could be an Estate Agent and committed to finding the best house for your clients even if that meant losing a sale in the short term, or you could be the type to deceive your clients just to make commission.

or am I getting the wrong end of the stick?

[Mags]

There are many (many!) values inventories out there

I used to be a career counsellor, and used to work with one that I found useful (The Values and Motives Inventory). However, there are so many more. Some are based around general life values, while others are focused on a particular area (e.g. work). Which one was used would depend on the reason for assessment.

I think many people don't realise just how many personality/value/aptitude etc tests there are in existence. I often used to have people phoning me to ask if I could do "the test... you know, the one that all career counsellors do that will tell me what to do with my life". Unfortunately no such one test exists One catalogue that I got from just one of the many test publishers out there ran to 500 pages (1 test per page) - multiply that by hundreds of test publishers and add in all the many "tests" available online, well... you get the picture!

[justfiverules]

Adelina,

Check out the work of Prof Edgar Schein on "Career Anchors":
Official Ed Schein Website

My ex-employer used them for an in-house training program.

I took the online (pay) test now administered by the Publisher, John Wiley in December and found it to be consistent with my how I found my career path to be over the last 25 years - and also in identifying the "career change" mode I was transitioning into in these, my mid-life years.

Here's a related post on career anchors I published in Dec 2007.

Although "Your mileage may vary" applies when taking and interpreting these types of tests, I still recommend it to potential career changers when the subject comes up.