Don’t know what makes you unique? Use these free personality tests to stand out as a job seeker!
One of the most difficult things about being a job seeker is selling your skills to people that don't know you. This isn't hard because you’re skillless — it’s hard because we are not taught to praise our own abilities. We are taught to diminish our own skills but praise others. This is not particularly helpful when trying to differentiate yourself from the mountains of jobseekers you’re competing with.
So how do you find out what skills you bring to the table in order to impress potential employers and leave a lasting impression?
One idea is to complete free, online personality tests that will break down your skillset and help you progress through the job seeker process. We’ve identified the best four:
Hollands Theory of Personal Career Choice
Hollands’ theory of personal career choice was established based on the importance of seeking a good fit between a person’s personality traits and the environmental traits of the workplace. It’s specifically designed to match someone with a job they’d work well in based on their personality, as people need to search for environments that will allow them to use their skills and express their values whilst taking on enjoyable problems, in order to thrive.
Upon doing the test, you’re given three letters based on which of the following traits best represent you:
(R)ealistic
(I)nvestigative
(A)rtistic
(S)ocial
(E)nterprising
(C )onventional
Once you’re awarded these traits, you’re matched with a work environment that carries those same letters. For instance, if you were given the letters IRA (meaning the top traits that represent you in the workplace are ‘investigative’, ‘realistic’ and ‘artistic’), you’d be matched to a career with those letters, such as a web developer.
Complete it here:
https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/RIASEC/
How to use it in job applications:
If you’re working in an environment with a community of people, like a hospital, you can talk to that in your interview if the test reveals one of that areas you thrive in is (S)ocial environments. You can state how much you value helping people and that people tend to view you as trustworthy — which helps build rapport with difficult patients in order to assist in their recovery.
Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator
This is a self-report inventory that’s used to match people into one of 16 personality types. The questions measure your level of:
Extraversion (E) vs Introversion (I) — whether you’re outward-turning or inward-turning.
Sensing (S) vs Intuition (N) — how people gather information from the world around them, through either reality or patterns and impressions.
Thinking (T) vs feeling (F) — whether you place an emphasis on facts and data or you make decisions based on emotions.
Judging (J) vs Perceiving (P) — whether you deal with the outside world through structure and firm decisions or you're more open and adaptable.
The test breaks down your dominant, auxiliary, and tertiary functions, meaning its shows where each personality trait comes into play in your behaviors and how they all complement each other. It’s a fairly comprehensive analysis, and the report at the end gives insightful information. It lists your:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Romantic relationships
Friendships
Parenthood
Career paths
Workplace habits
Complete it here:
https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
How to use it in job applications:
The different categories covered can give insight into how you operate as a person, which you can then use to prepare answers for job interviews. For instance, the ‘weaknesses’ section can prepare you for the interview question, ‘What are your greatest weaknesses?’. The friendship section can give you inspiration for the interview question, ‘How do you build long-term relationships with clients?’. The workplace habits section can prepare you for the question, ‘What sort of management style do you work best under?’.
DISC
The DISC assessment is a personal assessment tool designed specifically for workplaces to improve teamwork, communication, and productivity. It’s designed to be distributed to employees to:
Raise self-awareness
Improve teamwork
Make conflict more productive
Develop stronger sales skills
Manage more tasks effectively
Train without judgment
It breakdown your personality into four traits (and how much you illustrate those traits within your workplace). Those traits are:
(D)ominance; these people tend to be more confident and put an emphasis on accomplishing results
(i)nfluence; these people tend to be more open and place an emphasis on relationships and influencing others
(S)teadiness; these people tend to be dependable and place an emphasis on cooperation and sincerity
(C )onscientiousness; these people tend to place an emphasis on quality, accuracy, expertise, and competency.
How to use it in job applications:
If you scored high in Conscientiousness and you work as an accountant, you can talk to that in your cover letter, sprinkling in adjectives like ‘quality’, ‘accuracy’, ‘logically’ and ‘objectively’, painting a picture of someone who is careful, analytical and systematic in their approach — all the traits that make a reliable accountant.
Complete it here:
https://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/
The Big Five
This personality assessment (also known as the Five-Factor test) is a scientific personality theory. The model proposed that human personality can be measured along five major dimensions, each of them distinct and independent from the others. These dimensions drive our thoughts and behaviors and help us understand why different people react, behave and see things in their own unique way. The dimensions are:
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
It’s designed to understand the psychological differences between people and how they interact with the world.
Complete it here:
https://www.truity.com/test/big-five-personality-test
How to use it in job applications:
If you find you’re low in agreeableness, you probably have strength in negotiation — which is great news for salary review time, but also in any job requiring negotiation skills, such as sales assistant. You wouldn't phrase it in your résumé as ‘non-agreeable’ though, but you might find a way to explain that you enjoy the challenge of reframing a customer’s thoughts in order to change their buying behavior.