How our career test is different from others, and how it is better for you?

Choosing a career can be one of the most daunting tasks you’ll ever face. It’s hard to know where to start and even harder to figure out which career is right for you. That’s why so many people turn to career tests for help. Career tests are designed to give you an idea of which careers might be a good fit for you based on your interests, skills, and personality. There are dozens of different career tests available online, but not all of them are created equal. This blog post will explain what is a career aptitude test, look at some of the most used career tests available online, and tell you why our career test is the best!

What is a career test, and how is it used?

Career tests are used by individuals looking for guidance in their career choices. Typically, these can be high school or college students trying to decide on a major, or adults looking for a career change. In any case, career tests help you identify potential careers matching your interests, skills, and sometimes personality type.

There are dozens of different career tests available online, but not all of them are created equal. In addition, some career tests are more comprehensive than others, and some are more accurate than others. Therefore, it is essential to do your research before taking a career test to ensure you are getting the most accurate results possible.

The online career tests are mostly self-assessment quizzes that ask questions about your skills, interests, and work values. They usually have a range of questions, from very simple to quite detailed. They can take anywhere from 5-30 minutes to complete. The results will usually give you a list of careers that match your personality and preferences and some information on what those careers involve.

Some free online career tests

Most career tests you can find online are based on famous personality tests made by several psychologists. You can read this article in which we list most of them, how they were created, how they work, and in which context they are used.

Here are several websites that propose free career aptitude tests.

123 career test

This popular site proposes many tests, including an IQ test, a personality test, and a career test. The career test consists of 15 questions, in which you must choose two answers between 4 statements representing different actions. One answer is the action you prefer the most, the other one the action you like the least.

Here is an example.

After completing the test, you get your Holland score, as defined by the American psychologist John Holland. This code gives you job title suggestions and a matching percentage for each proposal. It is possible to click on the job description for more information about jobs, such as the required skills. Contrary to other tests, the suggestions are very specific and sorted by personality type and education level.

truity.com

Truity is another website offering a variety of tests you can use to explore your career interests. Their tests are variations of famous personality tests, such as Big Five, Enneagram, or Myers-Briggs. Their free career personality test is based on the Holland Code and Big Five systems. Concretely, you are asked different statements, and you must choose for each of them one option among 5: dislikes, somewhat dislikes, neutral, somewhat likes, and likes. For example: “Research a new medicine,” “Plan a marketing strategy for a new company,” or “Inspect a roof for leaks.”

In the results, you get an overview of your work style and best career interest areas. There are six areas related to six types of jobs: building, thinking, creating, helping, persuading, and organizing jobs. Depending on your score in every area, your job suggestions may differ. Here is an example of what you may get.

Note that the report you get at the end of the test is just a sample; you need to pay to unlock the full report.

Princeton Review

The Princeton Review is a website proposing many services for students, such as tutoring, test preparations, and admission resources (and by the way, it is not related to Princeton University). Their career test is one of the most popular on the internet, and it’s free to take. It consists of 24 questions, in which you have to choose between two statements, the one that is closer to your preferences.

Example: I would rather be a tax lawyer vs. I would rather be a newspaper editor.

Once you answer all the questions, you get an idea of your “style” and “interest” via colors. For each of them, you have four possibilities: red (expediting), green (communicating), blue (planning), and yellow (administrating). But beyond these characteristics, the most exciting part is the career recommendations. In that aspect, the suggestions are so vast and unrelated that it reduces the interest in this test.

What is so special about our online career test?

It is difficult to say what is the best career test among all these, because they are quite similar. A common thread of all these tests, and many other online career tests, is that they all rely on your personality to suggest jobs. In short, you answer questions about different situations, and your answers help define your character and positions that may suit you.

The problem with that method is that your suggestions are not based on your existing skills and knowledge but your personality. If you are a student, or at the beginning of your career, that’s good, as you are very flexible. But if you have some experience, you would probably want to take advantage of all the skills and knowledge you accumulated during these years. However, being proposed to be an astronomer when you are an accountant or a corporate lawyer will not help you move your career forward. Some personality traits may be similar between these occupations, but the skills are entirely different.

Contrary to other career tests, our career test considers your current and past professional experience before suggesting jobs. It does not ask you to choose the statement that describes you the best among a limited choice. Instead, it lets you enter your job(s) and educational background. It also asks you to enter your preferences at some point but in terms of skill, not personality. For example, instead of a personality trait like “Helping,” you can enter the skill “Care for others” to get proposals requiring that skill.

In other words, it is more adapted to people who want to change their careers than most online tests. But it is also effective with students. In that case, the test skips the professional experience part. However, it can still match the skill obtained through education and other activities to propose jobs requiring these skills. In the end, it is an entirely different approach to what other tests do, as it is more based on experience than personality. That makes the job suggestions more realistic, as they are closer to what users can do.

How to use our online career test?

Your free career test by Jinn is straightforward and doesn’t take long to complete. First of all, open the test page. The questionnaire appears just after the instructions.

The work experience

In the first step, you need to specify your work experience. The first question asks if you already have experience or not. Your experience is considered significant if you work more than a year cumulatively. So, unless you are or were recently a student, you can select “Yes.”

If you answer positively to the first questions, new fields appear. These fields let you enter the jobs you have done. Enter each position in each field in reverse chronological order. As you type your job title, suggestions will appear under the field. Select the appropriate job.

Selecting a job from the list is crucial to get suggestions at the end of the test. Indeed, many jobs have different titles (example: vehicle assembler, car assembler, vehicle assembly worker…), but the main title should be used in the questionnaire. To be sure about the job you enter, you can visit the career encyclopedia and enter your position in the search bar. You can then read the corresponding article and choose the job you want.

The education

This part doesn’t represent any particular difficulty. But, first, you must enter your highest degree and field of study.

The skills and values

This part is interesting: it allows the user to choose between more than 13K skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values. Because that is a high number, these skills are classified into different categories. The idea behind this question is that users can pick up a skill they want to use in their job.

To make the most of this question, I recommend selecting the maximum number of skills to add, then choosing a skill unrelated to any job or education you had. This way, you are likely to be offered more jobs, especially jobs closer to your interests, even if you don’t have the skillset yet. So, for example, if you are a web developer, you don’t need to add “Working with computers” as a skill since the test would assume you already do it in your job. But you could add a skill like “Negotiating” if you want a career where you may need to negotiate with others.

The results

Once you submit the test, you get results like this. At first, you have proposals for jobs requiring a similar skillset to those you already have, based on your current and past jobs. These proposals guarantee a smooth career change.

Like other career tests, we propose different links to job descriptions, with every link opening the full article, in which you can learn more. In addition, you can see career path suggestions in every job article, meaning you can also make your career plan based on the results.

You also get suggestions for jobs with more responsibility than the one you entered at the beginning of the test. So, this can give you ideas on the type of job you should get to advance your career.

The picture would not be complete if you did not know the distance between your current job and all the job suggestions, which is why, when you view the detailed report, you have for every proposal the list of all the skills you possess, and those you miss. Thus, you know exactly what you need to learn to have better chances of landing one of the jobs we suggest.

What are the benefits of using our career test?

There are several advantages of using our career test.

• It is the only online career test based on your work experience, educational background, and personal tastes. That means the suggestions you have are both accurate and closer to the reality than with other career tests
• It doesn’t take long to complete, with results entirely accurate
• It does not stop to just providing one job suggestion. Every job article gives career path tips with similar jobs regarding skills required and potential promotions or specializations to help people aim for higher goals.
• Our algorithm relies on our career encyclopedia. As a reminder, the career encyclopedia is a collaborative database of about 3000 jobs and 13000 skills. Users can contribute by editing or adding articles about their jobs and skills, just like Wikipedia. In the long term, we expect all articles to be of higher quality, meaning the algorithm itself will become more accurate in the career suggestions, regardless of who is taking the test
• It is free to use

Conclusion

So, if you’re feeling lost about what to do with your life or which career path is best for you, don’t worry. We have the perfect solution: our free online career test. This test is based on skills and experience rather than personality, so the job suggestions it gives you will be more realistic. With nearly 3000 jobs and counting in our database, we are confident that we have one of the best career aptitude tests, that will make a difference in your career choice. And the best part? It’s free! Click here to try it for yourself and see the excellent results.