Finding careers to match your personality

Vocational and personality assessment

Understanding your skills, abilities, personal qualities, values and interests will help you make more effective career decisions. Vocational and personality assessment tools can reveal common threads and patterns in your life that you may not be aware of, and confirm information you already know about yourself.

Vocational assessments analyse your answers to identify a range of careers that are suited your skills, values and interests.

Personality assessments measure whether your personal attributes would suit a particular work environment. They may assess your behaviours, attitudes, interests, values and motivations. Your results can be compared to the characteristics considered essential to specific jobs.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

The MBTI provides a model of personality type that can help you in your work and personal life through understanding:

• your own strengths, natural talents and potential growth areas; and
• why and how others may differ from you.

Consider using MBTI if you are thinking about a career change; if you want to have a greater understanding of your personality type or if you are involved in team building and organisational change.

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator can help you:

• understand your personality type and how you relate and interact with others
• better understand and appreciate individual differences
• improve work and personal relationships
• build effective teams
• identify leadership and management styles
• optimise career choice by understanding your natural preferences

Self-Directed Search (SDS)

The SDS is a self-administered, self-scored and self-interpreted vocational counselling tool. It can help you to explore what occupation to follow and, if you already have some ideas, it can help to confirm them or suggest other possibilities. If you are uncertain about your career ideas, the SDS can help you to locate a group of occupations for consideration.

The SDS can help you:

• explore what occupation to follow
• identify your feelings and attitudes towards different types of work
• recognise what you do well and not so well
• identify activities that you like or dislike.

Although the SDS is a self-administered tool, it can be helpful to discuss the results with your Careers Counsellor.

Strong Interest Inventory (SII)

The SII is based on the idea that individuals are more satisfied and more productive when they work in occupations or at tasks that they find interesting and when they work with people whose interests are similar to their own.

Your personalised report identifies your optimum career choices based on your interests and includes additional related occupations with concise job descriptions.

The Strong Interest Inventory can help you:

• choose career options, courses or subjects that might suit you
• increase your job satisfaction
• make a career change
• choose appropriate education and training
• plan a fulfilling retirement
• find a balance between work and leisure.

How to access these tools

Career counsellors

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Self-Directed Search are provided on a fee for service basis by our qualified careers practitioners. Make an appointment to discuss your needs with a Career Counsellor through Student Life Reception.