Tedded - Business Book Review

A couple of days ago, I wrote about “passion.” You need to find your passion for your career. Without passion, your job will be just a job. With passion, it will be your life; something that you can live with.

However, although you find your passion, finding a job is not a simple task because;

1. You might find more than one passion

2. Your passion might lead to more than one available career

As I mentioned in the previous post that “passion” is a root. It might lead to a tree but a tree has branches and finding the right branch requires further investigation.

Now, it is time to investigate and probe into ourselves. The widespread method of probing into your self is a “personality test.” However, there are many personality tests available. The purpose of using them is to find your strengths and the next step is to match your strengths with the right career path.

I believe that during your life; you should come across one or more times with the personality test. What matters is that you use the result to guide your path or it is just another enjoyable test that you read the result and say “Hey, that’s right” or “What?, that’s not me” and get on with your life.

The two most popular tests are;

1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

2. DISC assessment

The MBTI test is available online for free. You can just Google it and take the one that you like. You can take more that one sources of the test and compare the results.

DISC assessment is a widespread method of categorising people with the four factors, Dominant, Interpersonal, Steady, and Conscientious. A book “The Personality Code” by Travis Bradberry is my choice of DISC test; you can log on to their website here. Based on DISC assessment, the Personality Code test will come up with one of the fourteen personality types. Briefly, the book will describe your type and will tell you how to manage each type and what are the type vs anti-type.

I strongly recommend another book on testing, Strenghtsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. The official site is here. This book suggests that you focus on your strengths and manage weaknesses, not the other way around. The author gives a simple formula “Talent x Investment = Strength”.

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I have done many tests and you will not be amazed on how many career choices you will find. The process of finding the most suitable ones are;

1. List your strengths: Different personalities have different sets of strengths and weaknesses. Focus on your strengths. From the personality tests, you might have to synthesise the results to figure out your strengths. If you try Strengthfinder 2.0 (or 1.0), the test will list out the strengths for you. There is another approach I got from the book: “The Answer” by John Assaraf and Murray Smith. The authors categorised unique strengths into types of “intelligence”:

- Verbal-Lingistic Intelligence

- Logical-Mathematical Intelligence

- Musical-Rhytmic Intelligence

- Visual-Spatial Intelligence

- Body-Kinetic Intelligence

- Interpersonal Intelligence

- Intrapersonal Intelligence

- Naturalistic Intelligence

What we have to do is list the “achievements” we had in our lives that we value most and feel that they are successes. Then, we think of abilities and strengths that we used to pursue those achievements and there! We take them into our strength inventory.

2. Rank your strengths: You then need to rank your strengths according to different factors. Firstly, from different tests, if a specific strength always come up, it is likely that the specific strength is one of your dominant strengths. Moreover, you can evaluate them on your own if some strengths do not describe you at all. Come up with around five (four to six) strengths you believe you posess.

3. List the career paths: Next, it is the process that you have to take the inventory of different careers. Some tests will tell you suitable career paths; list them. An article by usnews.com (you can find many sources like this) matches the career paths with six types of people

- Realistic, hands-on people

- Investigative people

- Artistic people

- Social people

- Enterprising people

- Conventional people

4. Match you strengths with each career path: This part is difficult because you might not know whether your strengths will be suitable for a specific career path or not. Use your gut and ask for help. You will find that some career paths match only one of your strengths; some will match one or two more. Some career paths will match most or all of your strengths. List those career paths that match your strengths most and you’ll have the final list (less than five would be the best number).

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The steps sound simple and easy and (too) straightforward. However, the purpose of the steps is within you. They will make you think more of yourselves and understand yourselves more. The steps will make your mind and thought circle around your strengths; not the weaknesses, not the current crises.

The successful matching of your strengths and career path will make you find the job that will cherish and enrich your talent.

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What do you think of the method? Do you think that your current job makes your strengths flourish? Or does it make you fight your weaknesses day in day out? Do you think that personality test is a good tool to make a career choice?