Some detrimental results may occur if career aptitude tests are not used prudently.
One of the main roles of a counselor in providing career change advice is to empower you to make your own quality career choices with the counselor there only to help you through the process.
The process involving your career choices must principally be self-directed to achieve optimal results and this is where a career aptitude test or other career assessments can get in the way of this process.
The primary focus in all good career counseling should be to uncover the hearts desires of a person in relation to the world of work.
How A Good Career Counselor Works
A good career counselor will help you get in touch with your inner fire
– those passions and deepest desires that you were born with.
Then she will work with you to see how these relate to the world of work.
And the role of a career counselor is to help you do that to yourself.
Anything that gets in the way of this process can be damaging, including taking free career aptitude tests or any other type of career path test.
An unhealthy dependence can develop when a counselor sits across the table from you with the career aptitude test results in hand and that dubious list of careers that comes with it.
Career Tests Have Power
There comes an unspoken expectation that these test results have some unspoken authority.
A certain position of power shift can take place, toward the counselor and away from you.
You are now unconsciously saying to the counselor
show me the list of careers that career aptitude test tells me I should do
What happens then, when none of the careers on the list genuinely excite you.
Both parties can feel a certain responsibility to commit to something on that career path test despite a real lack of enthusiasm for any of them.
It is the same when completing a career aptitude test online on your own.
You feel that this elaborate career path test software has to be right.
That list of careers that the computer spits out now has a degree of authority over you.
This can quench any partially hidden desires in your heart that the career path test didn’t reveal.
And perhaps you weren’t totally sure about these in the beginning, so you dismiss it forever.
So now the test results have led you away from a legitimate method of how to choose a career.
This information refers only a career aptitude test that provides a list of careers or job types with the results of the test. Other assessments which only provide general information about aptitudes or a person’s motivations and do not provide a list of careers, may be useful.
Career Decisions Must Be Driven by You
The process of unraveling your destiny in the world of work works best when the whole career choice process is primarily directed by you and only aided by the career counselor, and not the other way around.
Many of us have an element of desire for someone else to tell us what we should do when difficult decisions are being faced.
There seems to be a part of us that would like someone else to provide the solution for us.
And although it is very attractive at the moment, things such as a career path test usually do not help us grow as a person.
The better self-help process not only helps us with how to choose a career that has more successful outcomes but also assists us in life in other areas by helping us become more emotionally intelligent and an empowered individual.
Of course, I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t seek help in solving our problems, just that we shouldn’t become overly dependent on the process.
Coaches Shouldn’t Play the Game for You
This is a bit like the role of a sports coach.
Most of us know that a good coach is an essential part of success for a sportsperson.
However, it is always the player who ultimately governs how well things do or don’t go.
The coach will train them, they will encourage them, and they will seek to extract the greatest possible talent out of that person physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually so they can become all they are able to be.
But if that coach in a bizarre twist started to take too much control and began to actually play the part of the game for the athlete, then the player would begin to lose all the benefits of getting out there and learning by doing.
Instead, they would begin to play the game less, become ridiculously dependent on the coach and ultimately fail as an athlete.
Their potential for growth and sense of self-achievement is gone.
The career counselor’s role is not too dissimilar.
She must come alongside and extract the best out of you, helping you accurately discover the wonderful gifts and inborn job skills you have within.
And with skillful questioning and probing help, you unravel those career choices that your heart is most closely aligned to; something a career path test or free career aptitude tests are unable to achieve.
He must never get in the ring for you and begin to fight for you.
If he does this it will sabotage the career planning process.
How to find your dream career using the best method I know of.
Other career development articles relating to career tests that you may be interested in include:
Career placement test – How they can limit career choices.
Career personality test – Is there a conflict of interests?
Career assessment – Uniqueness not highlighted!
Career testing – Why the experts are running from them.