If you do not use career counseling assessments, there is no question: You are missing out.

Career counseling assessments can provide you with rich analytical data to help you choose a career and showcase your strengths. They can even help you choose the right college! 

Assessments offer an invaluable tool for providing direction and capitalizing on innate traits that lead to job satisfaction and success. Many students struggle with identifying and articulating their key strengths. Assessments also often uncover hidden talents and career interests. 

 Let us take a look at some strategies to get your career planning on the right track.

Choose the Right Career Counseling Assessment

You may already know this, but answering ten questions on a random online questionnaire does not constitute a high-quality career assessment. The results would lack scientific and analytical components. 

At Campus to Career Crossroads, we made a business investment to administer accurate, formal career assessments. We have also committed to ongoing training sessions and continuous learning to ensure that clients completely understand their assessment findings. 

So, why are formal career counseling assessments a superior choice? Let us explore.

Reason 1: You get accurate results.

A formal career assessment offers a proven methodology and analytics. In addition, a team of professionals (psychologists, data scientists, etc.) validate the results. Many of the leading assessments contain extensive years of research and application. These factors correlate toward trusted and reliable results. 

Reason 2: It matches a career path with your skills.

Nobody can excel in every career field! We all have different strengths. Engineers require different skill sets than marketing managers. When you know your strengths and appropriate careers, you can spend your time exploring a narrow band of careers instead of the whole spectrum.

Let us say you are a high school student who takes a career assessment. You may more actively hone in on the right clubs to join in high school. Taking a chemistry class may also help you understand careers related to life sciences. On the other hand, getting involved in the mock trial team may help you more closely evaluate a legal career.

Reason 3: Top companies trust them.

Top companies invest heavily in career assessments to build and maintain high-performing teams. 

Our clients gain awareness of their own strengths in the workplace while acknowledging the strengths of others. This information can help them perform more effectively in internships and career positions that require teamwork. Business flows more efficiently when teams have the right balance of personalities to move forward and complement each other’s skills.

Benefits of Career Counseling Assessments

My experience with career counseling assessments began during my time in admissions. I was twenty-five years old when I took my first assessment. I was skeptical until I saw the results. 

I thought, “Wow. This is totally me!” 

The assessment helped me understand my strengths, ideal work environment preferences, and areas of improvement in an easy-to-read format. 

More importantly, as a young professional, it helped me realize that other people have different preferred work styles and motivators. We all see things differently. When teams are mindful of each other’s work preferences, we can improve job satisfaction and productivity.

Assessments can provide you with some incredibly beneficial career management benefits. Career counseling assessments can help you understand your strengths, get a sense of your own communication skills, identify areas of growth, discover new career possibilities, empower the college decision, and more. Let us go through each benefit, one by one.

Benefit 1: Understand your strengths.

What are your strengths? Most people have a difficult time answering that question quickly and concisely. Our assessments quickly help clients understand their strengths and how to apply them in work, school, and sports. Understanding your strengths can sharpen your confidence and give a level of clarity to everything you do.

Benefit 2: Get a sense of your own communication skills.

We all view tasks and challenges differently from school to work settings. This can make work and communications complicated when situations become stressful. Understanding some fundamental concepts of how people perform their best work and respond to stressful situations can help you become a more effective communicator.   

Benefit 3: Identify areas of growth.

Assessments help us realize areas for growth and potential roadblocks that could limit our career growth. Understanding underlying needs in relationships and how to curb unproductive behavior can open doors. Additionally, how we appear under stress, behave during conflict, and how we can increase harmony in the workplace all play a significant role in our overall career success. 

Stress in the workplace is one of the biggest factors for decreased performance. It happens to all of us! Few of us take the time to acknowledge what stresses us, how to stay motivated to prevent stress, or ways to address it. Assessments provide a reliable and reusable tool to identify tactics to help you.

Benefit 4: Discover new career possibilities.

One of the assessments used at Campus to Career Crossroads maps to twelve different job families. This can help you validate a career you may enjoy or suggest new career paths appropriate for you. It helps college-bound clients recognize a few college majors and can even reduce the cost of college because you will not spend two years figuring out what you want to “do with your life.” 

Pro tip: Keep an open mind. Sometimes career assessments connect you to careers you may have never considered. 

Benefit 5: Empower the college decision.

Career assessments can help you understand your ideal work settings and environments. In addition, you can find the best college fit as well. For example, some people may prefer a small college (with a few thousand students) over a large public university (with thousands of students).  

Our career assessments can help determine the best campus fit and also offer college planning help.

Benefit 6: Offers an internship and job launch resource.

Once you understand your core strengths, you can implement these findings into all aspects of your job search. At Campus to Career Crossroads, we help clients leverage their unique traits, from personal branding to interview skills. Check out a recent client experience with one of our assessments that helped him land a job in his major.

Benefit 7: Improve your career trajectory.

It is one thing to land a job and another to succeed in the position. A career assessment can provide insights into roles and responsibilities that best suit you. Whether you are wired for persuading others, strategic thinking, developing quality control processes, or implementing plans, your assessment will tell you.

Tips to Maximize Career Counseling Assessments

Assessments have both short- and long-term benefits. After you take an assessment, store it on your computer desktop or another accessible location and check out these tips.

Tip 1: Review it quarterly.

Think of a career counseling assessment as a book. Certain areas will make sense — such as how you diffuse conflict or how you recognize environments you find motivating. You will understand more about yourself and others if you review your assessment at different intervals. Set quarterly calendar reminders on your phone or computer to help you stay on top of this one.

Tip 2: Set small goals.

As you review your career assessment, you can continue to learn from it.

For example, maybe you have a goal to determine how you could work more successfully with a supervisor or teacher who does not think or perceive tasks in the same way you do. You may set specific goals to get to know that person’s style better over time or work on more long-term projects with this individual. Learning how to work with all people will help you build your reputation as an enjoyable coworker.

Tip 3: Research new careers.

You may be excited about the new career suggestions in your assessment but uncertain about where to start. O*NET offers hundreds of career options and unbiased information. You can quickly search career clusters, job families, and even jobs projected to grow over the next decade. O*NET has a sister website, My Next Move, which provides a concise overview of various careers. 

Choose the Right Assessment for You

Ready to find a career counseling assessment to unlock your strengths, interests, and motivations? 

We have done the research for you. Campus to Career Crossroads utilizes two industry-leading career counseling assessments for high school students, college students, and professionals. We provide the appropriate assessment based on your goals and career stage.

Do not spend time guessing about your career possibilities or opportunities. Let us help you learn from our data-driven assessments to help you find your path.

Let us connect! We work with clients throughout the country to ensure they understand their assessment results. Contact Campus to Career Crossroads today to change your tomorrow! 

FAQs

What is a career counseling assessment?

Career assessments are tools that help educate students about themselves and their career opportunities. They offer one of the most important career guidance tools available because they offer a comprehensive overview of how to work with others and how to sharpen your skill set to help you become more effective in your career.

What assessments do career counselors use?

Career counselors use numerous assessment tools, but some are better than others. At Campus to Career Crossroads, we have made it our mission to choose the best possible career assessments for our clients. We have made a significant investment in the most accurate, formal career assessments possible. We also help you further with training sessions and continuous learning so you not only understand your assessment findings, you also understand how to implement your results. 

What is the best career assessment test?

At Campus to Career Crossroads, we implement several strategies to help you understand your behavior and motivations in conjunction with your skills, knowledge, abilities, and values to help you reach your greatest career potential.

We have also committed to ongoing training sessions and continuous learning to ensure that clients completely understand their assessment findings. 

What are the examples of career assessment?

Career assessments fall into three major categories: type assessments, game assessments, and adaptive assessments. Type assessments set specific criteria, then identify where people fit into that specific type. For example, the Myer-Briggs Type assessment, the Holland Code Type assessment, and the DISC profile assessment would qualify. 

Game-based career assessments involve neuroscience-based exercises to assess cognitive and personality traits. 

Adaptive career assessments involve digital instruments that learn and adapt to the user. This means that they adapt to their audience to ensure the content, questions, and matching fit the user.

The best career assessments evaluate a number of skills. However, the best examples of career assessments assess your interests, personality, values, strengths, aptitude, and skills at an in-depth level.