Career Test Results: What Not to Expect

When I talk or email with someone about career test results, I sometimes find that a few people expect a career test to match them with one perfect career or give them a result with perhaps 5 or fewer "best careers" for them.

No scientifically valid career test can provide such a tailored result, and any test that provides such a result is misleading. Perhaps the phrase, "if it's too good to be true, it isn't [true]" is applicable here.

The process of choosing a career is necessarily complicated and time-consuming. And it also can be frustrating and hard to narrow down one's choices. Having a buffet to choose from is not always the most satisfying, nutritional, or efficient way to feed oneself.

Scientifically valid test results, like those from The Career Key test, and the exercises on our website help you narrow down your career choices:

• Holland's Theory of Career Choice, on which The Career Key test is based, gives you a way to consider the "big picture" of choosing a career - it helps answer the question, "how do I choose a career I will enjoy?"
  
• The Career Key test measures how similar you are to Holland's six personality types so that you can narrow your choices down to those jobs that match your strongest types.
• Doing the exercises we recommend in our article Learn More About Yourself helps narrow those matching jobs even further by examining their relationships to your unique qualities.
• Once you've got your "short list" of jobs that interest you, learn more about them using these strategies and then make your choice.
  

So although no one can credibly hand you a test result with your perfect career on it, there are proven guidelines for getting there. Better to trust homework you do on yourself and your options, rather than someone telling you what you should do.