Career assessment - the MBTI assessment

Career assessment – the MBTI assessment

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Today I am going to talk about a career assessment, the MBTI assessment. This assessment has many assessments underneath the umbrella of MBTI. You can look at the website elevate.com, and check out the assessments. I use the career assessment, and then I also use another MBTI report for leaders. Today I am going to talk about the people who want to change careers or pivot in their careers.

The MBTI is a great resource to understand yourself better, so you can make better decisions about yourself and for your future. It is the most widely used personality assessment. We all have stories of when we have taken it before and what we think we are. Most people can’t remember, however, it’s a great conversation to have. It’s in 70 different countries, so it is worldwide, it is well known and it is valid and reliable. It is a great assessment, except it’s not the end-all-be-all. It really is a research tool for you to become more self-aware about yourself and to process it with a coach.

I really like the story about it and how it was founded. The theory is from Carl Jung, who was a Swiss psychiatrist. He developed the theory of personality. He knew that personalities were not random traits rather we all had preferences.

The differences were patterns. He became involved and put types to these patterns. An American woman named Katharine Briggs was really enthralled in his research and she studied this for over 20 years. And she learned a lot about his types and different personalities and how they work in different areas.  The areas were in work, home, and in life. She had a daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, and the two of them took all of Jung’s work and all of Brigg’s work and developed questions that became the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or the MBTI.

Now, we can actually know what type of personality we have. I think that’s really cool. So in a nutshell, there are four pairs of opposites, like our left and right hand, we use both but not with the same amount of ease. I’m right-handed and I was born right-handed. I could learn how to write with my left hand, however, I would prefer to write with my right. That is what the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator gets to. What is our first preference? What were we born with? They all are great types, there’s no one better than the other, they all have positives and negatives to them.

The four opposites are extrovert or introvert, where we focus our attention and energy. Extroverted people focus on the outer world, introvert focuses on the inner world. Sensing or intuitive. The way we take in information and the kind of information we like and trust. Sensing, people like facts and experience. Intuition prefer future possibilities and insights. Again, you would use both, but maybe you would have a preference over the other. T and F, the way we make decisions. Thinking, we make our decisions on objective logic. Feeling, make decisions on personal priorities and relationships. J and P, our judging and perceiving. Our attitude toward the outer world and how we orient ourselves to it. People who prefer judging, want the world to be organized and orderly, and people who prefer perceiving seek to experience the world not to organize it. You can see how this would play out in a career.

If you are going through a career transition or wondering what you would like to do next in your life, the MBTI can shed light on that personality and give you some information for your next career. When people come to see me, they really want to know themselves and make a thoughtful decision for their next choice.  The Myers-Briggs is only one little piece of information to take in while you’re making your decision. It’s not the end-all be-all, it’s not going to tell you what you need to be and you’re going to be very, very happy. I would be a billionaire if I had an assessment like that. It really sheds light on your own insights about yourself and that you can process it with a coach.

You do need to be certified to administer the Myers-Briggs, and I am certified. If you do not do it through me, make sure your administrator is certified. That is a priority if you want that. And then, send me your email and information and we can set up a consult, a free consultation. If you want to learn more about it, if you want to take it, it is pretty powerful information. I really look forward into talking to you about it, because I do think it helps in how you make decisions in your transition into a new career. It also sheds light on how you are working and how you’re presenting yourself today. So you learn a lot about yourself. Alright, everybody. Thanks a lot. Have a good day. I’ll see you next time.

Strong Interest Inventory and Myers-Briggs Assessments

Strong Interest Inventory and Myers-Briggs Assessments

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Today I’m gonna talk to you about assessments. I do assessments for people who are in a career transition and/or who would like to improve their leadership skills. If you’re a leader, you have probably done many assessments. It is a good way to get to know yourself and to be self-aware of your strengths and challenge areas.

For career transitions, the most popular assessments are the Strong Interest Inventory and Myers-Briggs. And today, I am going to talk to you about the Strong Interest Inventory. It’s definitely one of the most popular ones that I do. And I do it in the process of a five-session series, and we usually do an assessment around the second or third session.

The main reason why we do it is for self-awareness.  The assessment is not the end-all, be-all. I would be a billionaire if I could give people assessments and they would tell them what career they should be doing, and they would be very happy in this career. And gosh, we would all be so happy and successful. We don’t have that tool, but the Strong Interest Inventory along with the Myers-Briggs helps you become more aware of what you do like and what you do want to go forward with, and what you do want to work towards.

The Strong Interest Inventory is based on Holland’s Theory, John Holland, and he has a whole book on it. In a nutshell, if you find your people, you’ll find your work. Then the opposite is true as well. If you find your work, you’ll find your people. He identified six types of work environments and types of people that work in those environments. The assessment assesses you within that pool of people that are your gender and that are in your age group with similar interests.  The six types are realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. The assessment gives you a three theme code.  It could be realistic, investigative, artistic, those are your three, so you can research just realistically. you could research realistic and investigative, and then you could research about all three of them. And the Strong Interest Inventory does that for you, but there are other research tools too, once you know your theme.

In addition to the Strong Interest Inventory, after you know the theme, it’s very interesting, they also tell you your interests, work activities, potential skills, and values. You get to assess, “Okay, is that really me, or is that not me?” And in most clients it is them, and they think it’s really cool ’cause it’s like them. “Oh yes, I do like cooperation, generosity, service to others, that is my value. Those are my values, so I want to be around people that have those values.” For enterprising, the values are risk-taking, status, competition, and influence. People that have those values go to similar careers. That’s what the Strong Interest Inventory tells you, and then it gives you your top five interest areas, so you can research those.

Then it gives you ten titles, which everyone loves to see. Those ten titles you can research. They also give you dissimilar interests, which is always fun. They give you lots of information for the ten titles, and then it zones out again and gives you even more careers that you might be interested in. I’m social, helping, instructing, caregiving. I could look into all of these careers, and then I could look at enterprising alone. My third one is artistic so I could look at artistic. It is a fun assessment to get to know yourself.

I do recommend it if you are in a career transition, however, you do not have to use it. It is up to you and I can give you more information. Just call me, send me an email and we can set up a free consultation. My email is, JaneMcKeenBCS@gmail.com, and we can go over what this assessment can do and/or with the Myers-Briggs as well. The main focus of why to do an assessment is for your own reflection and the ability to process it with a coach. Processing with a coach is where the learning comes in. I am going to be asking you questions to widen your self-awareness about yourself. There might be something that we can uncover that you didn’t know about yourself and that you do want to work towards.

The other reason why assessments are so powerful is that it confirms what you’re already thinking about yourself. For instance, from the first session which is a background, I’m asking you some questions about your background and I’m pulling out information from you, things that you loved to do.  You create some themes and ideas from that session. The assessment confirms it, or it might shed light on a new area that you just did not think of. I highly recommend looking into it if you’re interested. I’m gonna send a sample report attached to this video, and if you are watching this and it’s not attached, just reach out to me and I can send you a sample assessment.