The Tools of the Trade

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Before you start sharpening your pencils and writing out your employment history, you should think about what you will have to work with. If you don't know what kind of job is right for you, it might help you to know what kind of personality you have. Personality, or self-assessment, tests can help you learn more about yourself�your likes and dislikes. This can help you partially determine the job for you. You can pay to take the test, but you can find a few tests on the Web�and some of them are free! One such exam is the Keirsey Temperament Sorter (http://sunsite.unc.edu/personality/keirsey.html). Here you can take a 70 question, A and B answer test. Your results are then sorted into four different personality types and you can read a description of your type.

These tests can help you learn more about yourself, including your strengths and weaknesses. Learning more about yourself is essential to knowing what type of job will work for you. For example, if you are a very shy (or introverted) person, choosing a job that requires you to work with many people might not be the best choice for you. By the same token, if you discover you have a tendency to be fairly shy�and the test puts this on paper for you�maybe you will decide to work on losing some of your shyness.

If you think another test is what you need, E-Span offers a link to a "Match your Personality to a Career Path," (http://www.hawk.igs.net/careers/) a site put together by James Sofia, a Canadian doctor, that will help you match your personality traits to a career. If you look at the online information and have more questions, you can e-mail the doctor: Jim@hawk.igs.net. The software that will help you to do this, however, costs about $40. If you want to go the extra mile and you have the money to spend, this might be the choice for you.

If you aren't as sure about spending money on a service like this, try taking the Birkham Quiz (http://www.aboutwork.com/careerplanning/assessment.html) offered on the About Work's Career Planning section. Made up of 24 questions, the Birkham Quiz matches your personality to career fields. The quiz is actually a tease for the Birkham method, which can provide you with much more information about your career tendency. If you don't want to use the Birkham Method, you can still get plenty of useful information through this quiz, which will match you with interests and a style category. Your interests category is separated into four different sections, or colors, and from there you can find out what your color normally represents. Your style represents how you like to act and can help you see if you can actually work within a chosen field. Also broken down into four colors, your style color can be different from your interest color. The description that follows is interesting. And if you think you want to learn more about the method or you would like to go further with the method, you can connect with a form to have more information sent to you.