Truth is, most of us are in the dark about who we really are.
Yet, for instance, our personality type will determine what hobby we’ll choose and whether we’re going to have a blast at an office holiday party or be counting down the minutes until it’s time to head home.
Personality tests are used to help you shed light on your personality traits, your values and work preferences. But are personality tests reliable?
Simine Vazire, a personality researcher at the University of California, Davis says we should be cautious here.
“Until we test the assessments scientifically we can’t tell the difference between that and pseudoscience like astrology.”
However, we have found some well-designed, standardised assessments that will actually help you understand yourself better.
They can aid you in your personal life, but can also help you weed out what job roles suit your personality type.
And as Aristotle once said, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of wisdom.” So, learn what makes you tick, then head straight for a more successful and rewarding life.
We’ve trawled the internet to find these free personality tests.
Personality Tests To Help you Hack Your Personality Type
Choose general personality tests when you want to learn about every aspect of your personality in a single shot.
Ready to decipher your personality type? Let’s get to it.
1. Human Metrics
You may just be curious about testing the waters in another field. Or you may be seriously doubting your present career choice.
Human Metrics will give you valuable info that will empower you to choose the right job role for yourself. It will also provide additional support when you’re on the brink of a career shift.
The test can help you decide whether you should only make subtle changes and switch to a different position within the same company or take a totally new path.
Additionally, you’ll be able to measure yourself against your favourite famous personalities. How cool’s that?
2. 16 Personalities
Care to learn whether you have what it takes to make it as an Advertising Sales Person or a Market Research Analyst? Or any other job position for that matter?
The 16 Personalities test can help get you a straightforward answer to this question. Translated into 30 languages, this widely used personality test has been used by 50 million people globally.
Based on Carl Gustav Jung’s study of psychological traits and the famous Myers-Briggs test, it looks at your personality through the lens of the following 5 personality aspects: mind, energy, nature, tactics, and identity.
The test gives you insights into how you relate to other people, how you make decisions, what your strengths and weakness are and how they relate to your preferred career choices.
Once you get your hands on your matching personality type, you can go as far as predicting your earnings. And even predict how high you’ll score on the job satisfaction scale.
3. Test Color
What are your thoughts on a test that determines your character based on your preferred colour choices?
Test Color does just that. It tells you whether you’re fit for leadership. Whether you’re more likely to keep your workspace all business or with a personal twist – based on only two questions.
You may not buy into it initially and it does sound weird. But to clarify: this test has been validated by a team of mathematicians, psychoanalysts and clinical psychologists.
And for what it’s worth, Test Color strikes just the right note (or shall we say colour?) when it comes to figuring out your:
- Creativity and imagination,
- Emotional intelligence,
- Your behaviour in group settings, and
- Your work, organisation and management styles.
4. Quick Personality Quiz
Do you see yourself as a person who’s bent on seeing a task through once you’ve taken it on?
Would you shout your proposal from the rooftops as soon as you set foot in company quarters or would you rather wait for the right moment and slip the info into your manager’s ear?
Taking the Short Personality Quiz will provide you with results along the lines of the examples given above. And all it takes is answering 10 simple multiple answer questions.
Based upon the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), this personality questionnaire will show how you stack up against the Big 5 Personality Traits:
- extraversion,
- agreeableness,
- conscientiousness,
- emotional stability, and
- openness to experience.
Tests To Measure and Refine Your Emotional Intelligence
However strong-minded you might be, unforeseeable daily events can put your emotional stability at risk.
Personal and professional challenges will keep on coming and you need to be up for the task. Sooner or later this will leave you wrestling with emotions.
How well you fare in emotional intelligence, also known as emotional quotient (EQ), will determine your success – in and outside of the office. It’s just as important as IQ.
So, your best shot is to crack your own emotional make-up.
Emotional intelligence is about getting the hang of your own and other people’s emotions and learning how to harness and influence them.
Ready for adventure? Let’s take the plunge.
5. Goleman’s EQ Test
Based on scientific research by Daniel Goleman, author, psychologist and science journalist for The New York Times, this test will measure your EQ in an indirect, story-like way.
According to Goleman, emotional intelligence reveals a lot about who we are. He’s broken the concept up into 5 different EQ determinants. These are:
- Self-awareness.
- Self-regulation.
- Motivation.
- Empathy.
- Social skills.
So, this test will help you get to the bottom of how you act in a number of social situations.
The main takeaway? As soon as you pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses you can start acting on them. It’s easy! You start using those skills you do have and developing those you don’t.
6. Institute for Health and Human Potential (IHHP)
Whether you’re a natural “people person” or you relish the idea of a quiet home retreat, this test will show you how you deal with any interpersonal problems that plague you.
We’ve all been there. We all know how it can sometimes be hard to develop a good rapport with people around us. Turns out being successful with people is more about the heart than brains.
“Emotional quotient is more important for one’s success than the Intelligence quotient” ― Gunjan Bugde
The IHHP test is a list of short, on point questions on how you navigate your personal and professional relationships. As well as how EQ smart you are in certain real-life situations.
Intelligence Tests To Measure Your Intellectual Capacity
Some of you may have mustered the courage and already taken a traditional, standardised IQ test. Others may be dismissive of the concept altogether, sceptical about whether they are truly reliable.
Science has had its doubts, too. But finally, psychologists have reached a consensus that existing IQ tests measure only one aspect of intelligence. Namely, they “grossly oversimplify the abilities of the human brain.”
To illustrate, they fully exclude skills such as social understanding, creativity and other acquired skills.
Still, an IQ test can teach you about your general cognitive problem-solving skills. And that’s good to know.
Ready to dive into the workings of your mind? Let’s get straight to it.
7. The Mensa IQ Test
Who wants to join Mensa? This oldest and most prestigious IQ society offers official culture-fair tests that are “designed to measure intelligence without the influence of cultural climate, level of education or verbal fluency… are non-verbal and require only that candidates be able to distinguish relationships in figures and shapes.”
So, if you’re up for some mental gymnastics to keep intellectually fit while keeping up with your professional development, then these tests may be just the ticket for you.
Things to note:
- You have a half an hour limit to answer 30 questions.
- After you’ve submitted your answers, you get access to answers and discussion.
- However, the 30-minute time limit won’t affect your final score.
8. My Personality Test
The brainchild of PhD researchers, this professional-grade IQ assessment is a careful collection of brain teasers that will help you ascertain your IQ score. And not only that. The test will give you an insight into your right and left brain abilities.
Importantly, the researchers leave a glimpse of hope even for those that score lower than they expected.
Namely, they’ve discovered that human fluid intelligence can be built, just like our bodily muscles can.
But it gets better. There’s an online brain game that can help you build up your fluid intelligence. And it’s backed up by scientific research! It’s worth a crack, right?
9. Free IQ Test
This free IQ Test is a premium psychometric exam that will give you a clear picture of how well you connect the dots. What you get in the end are instant PhD-certified results.
This 43-question test will look at your cognitive performance from several different angles. Anything starting from word analysis all the way up to spatial reasoning.
But note:
This test is a great way to reveal your intellectual potential. But not your motivation to succeed; it’s your call to determine where you’ll take your ambition.
Job Personality Tests To Help You Along the Right Career Path
Keen to explore your career options? Want to explore your inherent skills and find ways to level them up? Keep on reading.
There are plenty of career self-assessment tools online that can help you find a job that matches your personality type.
Additionally, recruitment managers are increasingly using pre-employment testing to screen job candidates. Want to be prepared? Take these online pre-employment tests.
According to a survey from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and Mercer, 67 per cent of HR professionals are using personality tests and pre-employment testing to vet candidates in the hiring process.
We’ve collated some of the best free job personality tests for you.
10. PathSource
Are you a graduate student trying to find your place in the sun?
Or a long-standing professional and you’ve had enough of being stuck at the same job for too long?
Here’s the one-stop shop for both challenges.
This free career exploration tool will help you make career choices.
It’s simple. The test uses your personality characteristics and your interests to help you come up with your career list.
PathSource is a treasure chest for job hunters. Signing up for this app gives you access to an extensive collection of 2,600 informational interviews.
So, what you get is an insider’s view from workers in a diverse range of professions. Pretty useful, right?
Now, here’s the best part! Income expectations and lifestyle issues are worked into the resulting algorithm.
11. Skills You Need
You probably know already that Interpersonal skills are essential to your professional career.
Also, the more you know yourself, the more likely you are to improve your interpersonal relationships – in and outside of the office.
Learning whether you score above, at, or below average at interpersonal skills will show you where you stand and highlight areas for improvement.
Furthermore, users can also use this test to learn what kind of work environments suit them best.
Skills You Need helps you discover how you rate in four major aspects of interpersonal skills:
- listening,
- verbal communication,
- EQ, and
- teamwork.
12. Sokanu Career Assessment
Want to be shortlisted for a job that’s a perfect fit for you? Take the Sokanu test.
Its database includes more than 800 careers to match you up with. More than enough to try and figure out which careers you have an aptitude for.
Spencer Thompson, the founder of the website makes this bold statement.
“Having a job that is at least an 80th percentile fit for who you are is crucial to people’s health and happiness – to what makes humans human.”
How good is your current match?
What sets this job personality test apart from others is that it gauges both your interest and skill level. And with this knowledge at hand, you can make a more in-depth assessment of how successful you’d be in a job.
The test walks you through a broad range of career situations and then presents you with several options for your ultimate career.
13. Red Bull Wingfinder
Wingfinder is a 35-minute online assessment that will outline your strengths in four different areas of your personality:
- creativity,
- thinking,
- connections, and
- drive.
Upon completing the personality test, you’ll get an individualised report that will teach you how to leverage your strengths and perform better at work.
The test identifies what skill set makes you a fast learner, but also equips you with tools to move the needle.
Wingfinder’s database holds plenty of helpful advice from a number of accomplished athletes and entrepreneurs that share your strengths. How cool is that?
14. Holland Code
Career planning brings plenty of stress and uncertainty. Holland code will give you tips to help you cope and navigate these rough patches.
Take a 10-minute test and get an immediate result that will identify your main areas of interest and measure your aptitude for a particular type of work.
Holland Code uses tested scales to analyse your aptitude in the 6 major job areas:
- Realistic – Building, fixing, working outdoors
- Investigative – Thinking, researching, experimenting
- Artistic – Creating, designing, expressing
- Social – Helping, teaching, encouraging
- Enterprising – Persuading, leading, selling
- Conventional – Organising, categorising, recording
Upon completion, you’ll get a list of careers best suited to you as well as details on how you scored for each of the interest areas.
15. O*NET Interests Profiler
Finally, O*NET Interest Profiler can give you an idea of what careers you might want to explore. It’s administered by the United States Department of Labor and is based on John Holland’s RIASEC model, too.
The 60-question test analyses an individual’s vocational interests and how this relates to real-life careers.
Moreover, test results list clustered careers related to their respective interests. They are further broken down into five job zones that require different levels of preparation for a given job.
To top it off, the website offers extensive career information such as skill descriptions and salary information.
Grab the Reins of Your Personal and Professional Life
OK.
Before you’re back on duty making sure that your workplace wellness lives up to everyone’s expectations, take a few moments to take one of our personality tests and figure out ways to make the most of your ability to influence others.
And we can help. Here at Alsco, our mission is to help businesses just like yours across the country to attain a better, healthier and more sustainable Australia. One where people are happy to go to work and feel productive, valued and healthy.
As individuals we all need to know why we’re doing what we’re doing.
But it’s far from easy to navigate a fulfilling, productive career. You need to stay on top of your industry trends, understand your needs and motivation and those around you.
Whatever your next move might be, it’s best to arm yourself with knowledge before you take the plunge.
There’s plenty of opportunity for this in the above tests. Take your pick and happy testing!
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