To provide you with comprehensive insights on how self-assessment tools can inform a career transition decision, we’ve gathered eight expert opinions from career coaches to founders. From gaining self-awareness for strategic decisions to identifying core competencies for career transition, these professionals share their unique perspectives and practical examples. Dive into their wisdom to make your career transition smoother and more informed.
- Gain Self-Awareness for Strategic Decisions
- Leverage Unique Talents with Self-Assessment
- Harness Insights from Enneagram and Myers-Briggs
- Explore Career Options with Objective Measures
- Guide Career Paths with Emotional Intelligence
- Discover Interests and Preferences with Consistency
- Reveal Natural Aptitudes with Strengths Assessment
- Identify Core Competencies for Career Transition
Gain Self-Awareness for Strategic Decisions
If you’re at a pivotal point in your career, self-assessments can help gain a deeper sense of your strengths, passion, values, and work style.
They can also offer new ideas or career avenues you may not have initially considered. Even if you have completed a self-assessment before, there is value in retaking them. Possessing strong self-awareness is a powerful tool for making more informed, strategic, and aligned decisions.
Kathryn Metzger, Career Coach, Discovery Career Planning
Leverage Unique Talents with Self-Assessment
The right self-assessment tool can effectively inform a career transition decision by allowing individuals the opportunity to explore what they naturally do best. Self-awareness is empowering and is core to the decisions we make.
When we know ourselves better and understand our unique patterns of thinking, feeling, and interacting with the world, we can make smarter, more intentional choices about our future. This knowledge allows us to lean into our unique talents and avoid areas of potential weakness, setting us up for greater success.
Jodi Johnston, Career Coach, The Women’s Resource
Harness Insights from Enneagram and Myers-Briggs
We live in a culture where silence and introspection are marginalized. We take in so much stimuli every day that to genuinely quiet the mind and engage in self-reflection is the equivalent of Sisyphus continuously pushing the boulder up the hill.
This is where self-assessment tools come in. Rather than sitting in silence until the answers come to us, we can hack the system a bit by answering a series of questions that then spit out insights about us we may not have noticed before. Using self-assessments like the Enneagram and Myers-Briggs can be extremely helpful in bringing our strengths and weaknesses front and center, allowing us to address them with direct action to move ourselves and our lives forward.
If you don’t know who you are, you don’t know the special ways you bring value to a work team—and neither will they in the interview because you haven’t practiced pitching it. Self-discovery should be the foundation of any career transition!
Lauren Daly, Academic and Career Coach, College Hacked
Explore Career Options with Objective Measures
Many people know what they don’t want to do, but are unsure of what they want to do next, or are afraid to say it out loud for fear that others might judge them and their idea badly.
A good career assessment offers an objective measure that gives someone ideas for career options they may never have considered. An assessment can provide a beginning for exploring alternatives. It did for me when I was considering a change from recruiting!
Jeff Altman, Global Job Search Coach, The Big Game Hunter, Inc.
Guide Career Paths with Emotional Intelligence
Self-assessment tools, especially those rooted in psychology, offer a mirror to our inner workings. For someone considering a career transition, these tools can be invaluable. Let’s take Emotional Intelligence (EI) as an example.
Through my work in mental health and personal development, I’ve seen how understanding one’s EI can guide their career paths. If someone scores high in interpersonal skills but low in analytical thinking, they might reconsider a move to a data-heavy role. Instead, they could explore positions that leverage their relational strengths.
By grasping these insights, one can make informed career choices that align with their innate abilities and passions, ensuring a more fulfilling and productive career trajectory.
Bayu Prihandito, Psychology Expert, Life Coach, Founder, Life Architekture
Discover Interests and Preferences with Consistency
Self-assessment tools are exactly that—to inform. With that said, this only works if the assessment is taken with a “shoes-off” mentality, meaning there is no “ideal” role in mind. Remove “who you wish you were and want to be,” but rather focus on taking the assessment based on where your true interests and preferences lie.
The other key component is consistency, and taking various assessments to understand overarching themes and where skills and traits interact. Once this information is gathered across several assessments, the strengths, areas of interest, and transferable skills are narrowed down, thus providing a sense of direction for a potential career transition.
Megan Dias, Career Services Coach, Parsity
Reveal Natural Aptitudes with Strengths Assessment
Self-assessment tools can be a game-changer for someone considering a career transition. For example, taking a strengths assessment test could reveal that an individual has a natural aptitude for strategic thinking and problem-solving.
Armed with this information, someone stuck in a routine administrative role may decide to transition into a strategy or consulting position. It’s this kind of tailored insight that can make the difference between continuing in an unfulfilling job and making a move towards a role that can bring both success and satisfaction.
Juliet Dreamhunter, Founder, Juliety
Identify Core Competencies for Career Transition
Let’s say you’re in a marketing role but are contemplating switching to project management. A self-assessment tool could help you identify core competencies between these roles. It might reveal that you have excellent organizational skills and a powerful ability to work with cross-functional teams—traits essential for project management. On the flip side, it could also show you areas where you might struggle. Maybe you have low scores in stress tolerance, a critical skill when juggling multiple project timelines.
Just knowing this information can help you make a more informed decision. Perhaps you’ll decide to take a course on stress management or start off with a less demanding project management role to build up your resilience. In this way, self-assessment tools don’t just show you who you are; they give you a roadmap to becoming who you want to be in your next career phase.
Gordana Sretenovic, Co-Founder, Workello ATS