Assessments Writeup Example #3
[Thanks to TT for sharing his writeup based on his Strong Interest Inventory and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) results.]
The Strong and MBTI assessments were a great way to gain further knowledge of my career path and my personality styles to help understand which direction I could head into.
After receiving my results, I was able to compare them with the exercises from our textbook. I found these results to be very interesting.
For example, from my Strong assessment, my theme score was ECR, which is Enterprising, Conventional and Realistic. My Holland Score from the book was ESA, which stands for Enterprising, Social and Artistic.
I understand the Enterprising part because I am heavily influenced towards business, especially entrepreneurship. I am currently working in marketing, and I feel that I can be very good at it as my future career. Therefore, I am not surprised that I scored very high with an STD score of 66 in that field.
What stands out to me was the fact that in the Strong results, I scored moderately high in Conventional and Realistic, while I scored moderate in Artistic and very low in Social.
I clearly remember the Holland exercise from the book and not having many check marks under the Conventional and Realistic fields. Yet, when I was taking the Strong, I could not tell which field the questions were under, so maybe that could have played a part in my scoring.
Regarding the MBTI, I received ENFP from both the online assessment and textbook exercise. I am an Extravert, and I take in information with Intuition. I make decisions based off of Feelings, and I deal with the outer world through Perceiving.
The top 10 career fields that appeal to me the most are as follows:
- Marketing and Advertising
- Sales
- Entrepreneurship
- Culinary Arts
- Management
- Visual Arts and Design
- Investing
- Non Profit Volunteer
- Athletics
- Business Supervisor
I chose these career fields because recently I have found a strong interest to work in marketing. I know that I am creative as well as good with people. Therefore out of any business career, marketing and even sales would suit those skills.
The problem that I faced when I entered college was never being given the opportunity to be able to branch out and try different majors. My school was too expensive to be able to afford an extra semester or year to figure out what I wanted to do and which field suited me the best.
Therefore, I stuck with business because I know my father was very good at it, and I watched him do it ever since I was a child.
After four years of taking business classes, I found out that I thoroughly despise finance, but I have a knack for marketing, global business and sales.
My Strong theme corresponds with my top ten list of careers because for all the examples of interests and work activities under “theme descriptions” for Enterprising, Conventional and Realistic, they all had business-related work activities and interests.
On the list, I included a few jobs which are completely different from business – Culinary Arts, Non Profit Volunteer and Athletics. These career fields are my “passion” jobs. I am not saying that business is not a passion of mine, but I do have a certain spot in my heart for culinary arts and especially nonprofit volunteer work. Athletics is there because who would not want to be a professional basketball player.
What interested me the most was the fact that my Strong theme letters did not match with the exercise we did in the book, yet my MBTI letters were exactly identical to the exercise in the book.
After doing more research, I realized that the Strong was used to help identify a career focus and begin the career planning and exploration process. Not only did it stand out to me that my results from both the Strong and the book exercise tests were different, but the “Top Ten Strong” occupations list that was suggested to me was surprising as well.
Scoring so high in Enterprising, I was assuming there would be a lot of business related jobs. Yet the top ten occupations suggested had jobs such as optician, counselor, flight attendant, florist, life insurance agent, or parks and recreation manager. I am curious as to how this was derived, because none of those occupations listed above is something that I would ever want to get into.
I will incorporate what I learned into my real-life career planning by focusing on what I am strong at. I will use both the results from the Strong Interest Inventory and the MBTI assessments in order to create the right balance of styles heading towards the right direction.
For example, I scored very high in Enterprising, so I want to continue to work towards marketing or entrepreneurship. Yet, since I am Extraverted, someone who thinks with their feelings and is spontaneous, I must look for the right job which will suit those needs.
I cannot do business in a place that will not let me be who I am, and by taking these assessments, I have learned that I will only be truly successful if I work at a place that lets me thrive with my Strong themes and my MBTI preferences.