Selina Barker takes a look at psychometric assessments and how they can make all the difference when you're changing career.
Different careers suit different people depending on their own unique mix of natural strengths, tendencies, motivations and style of interacting with the world. The challenge then, when making a career change, is to identify what your own unique mix of natural tendencies, motivations and strengths actually are — the problem is that quite often we don’t recognise our own strengths and presume that everyone works in a similar way to ourselves.
This is where psychometric assessments come in as a key tool in the career change process.
Most people when they are introduced to ‘psychometric assessments’ eye them with suspicion — conjuring up the memory of those next-to-hopeless career ‘tests’ at school which always seemed to come up with police officer, lawyer or nurse depending on which classes you liked best.
I always viewed them with the same scepticism — uncomfortable with the idea of being pigeon-holed as a certain ‘type’ of person. That is, until I was finally persuaded to try a psychometric assessment when I was going through my own career change.
The results of that assessment blew me away. Never had I so clearly been shown how I interact with and perceive the world and therefore what my strengths and natural style of working are. Not only that, but it showed how differently other people function and interact with the people around them and where I sit within all of that. It was as if a huge light had been switched on.
So how does this help when making a career change? It’s all well and good to gain insights about the way you work and what your strengths are, but how do you then take what you’ve learnt from a psychometric assessment and use it to help figure out what career will suit you best?
I was keen to explore this further and went to see a recommended psychometric assessor and performance coach, Marc Jerrard from Armada Performance. Marc combines psychometric assessments with practical coaching so that his clients can take what they have learnt about themselves from the assessments and turn it into a practical route map to identifying the careers that will suit them best and how to best make that shift.
He offered to take me through this process so that I could see for myself the results.
I took a similar psychometric test to the one I had done before (Myers Briggs) and another that looked more specifically at my personality within a work setting (15FQ+). The results were then sent to Marc where he wrote up a report explaining and interpreting the significance of those results in practical terms.
A week later we met up so that he could talk me through the report. Having already done a psychometric assessment a year before I wasn’t expecting to discover anything new, but once again I was blown away by what I learnt from the assessment and the many extra insights and understanding that came with having a qualified assessor interpreting the results for me.
It is rare to be presented with such a complete and clear picture of your personality and explanation of why you are the way you are. I actually found it quite an emotional experience. It suddenly made sense of so much — why I am the way I am at work, among friends, in relationships, with my family.
Your 'weaknesses' in one context may be a 'strength' in another
You see so clearly why there are ways of working that you’ve struggled with and not because there’s something wrong with you that you need to change, but simply because that way of working simply doesn’t come naturally and therefore doesn’t suit you. It came as a huge relief to me in a funny kind of way. What’s more, where certain characteristics might be considered a ‘weakness’ in one context, in another it will be highly valued as a ‘strength’.
Think of the stereotypical stickler for organisation and regulations — with a love of lists and detail and order. Send them into a creative brainstorming session and they’ll likely become overwhelmed, frustrated and upset at such a seemingly erratic, chaotic and illogical process. The natural brainstormers in there will in turn get frustrated at their lack of creative and lateral thinking and need for order which, to the creatives, is stifling. But once the idea has been created and it’s time to execute and deliver that idea, those creatives, with their reputation for disorganisation and disinterest in detail and order, will happily hand over the role of organisation and delivery to that natural organiser whose previously frustrating love of lists, detail and order are suddenly a highly valuable asset.
Everyone has their natural role in the world. Finding yours is what psychometric assessments are all about
Why aren’t we given these assessments at school from an early age, I don’t know — we should be. I genuinely recommend to everyone, particularly when they are figuring out the career that will suit them best, that they take a psychometric assessment and to do it with a qualified coach that will interpret it for you and show you how to use the results to start building a picture of the work that suits your personality on so many levels.
I walked away from my meeting with Marc floating on a cloud. So much had become clear — I was excited about what I had discovered and the implications it had for my career going forward.
Leave a comment below: How have psychometric tests helped you clarify your career change?
As well as being our lead Careershifters Workshop Coach, Marc Jerrard is a career transition and professional development guru.
Armada Performance uses psychometrics to their full versatility as a tool for approaching a number of individual needs and business issues to help enable individuals to realise their full potential.
To find out more about how psychometric assesments and how they can fast track your career change get in touch with Marc at Armada Performance quoting 'Careershifters'.
Email: m.jerrard@armadaperformance.com
Website: http://www.armadaperformance.com
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