Jobs for me quiz: compare four options and see a sample result

A quiz like this is a handful of questions that ends in suggested jobs. You answer, it scores you, and it hands back titles or fields to look into. The questions underneath decide everything, though, and different quizzes ask very different things.

Three kinds of job quiz

The first kind asks about interests. It lists tasks like rewiring a lamp, drafting a budget or coaching a team.

You say how much each one appeals to you, and the quiz matches your likes to jobs where people do those things all day. O*NET's Interest Profiler, which is free and comes from the Department of Labor, is the best known of these, and it is a solid place to start.

The second kind is a personality test with a careers section added on. It puts you in a type, then lists jobs that people of that type often hold.

16Personalities works this way. The type can feel accurate, but the job list describes people like you on average, so it can drift a long way from your own life.

The third kind makes you pick how to spend the same hour: finish one project well, or move three projects forward a little. Those answers are about habits, and habits tie closely to what a job asks of you from one day to the next.

The one question every career quiz is chasing

Underneath, they all want to know which jobs would suit this person. The difference is the evidence each one uses. A personality test asks what you are like.

An interest quiz asks what you enjoy. A choice-based quiz asks what you tend to do. That is why one person can get three different answers from an online career quiz, a type test and an interest profiler on the same afternoon.

A quiz that works from choices gets closest to the work itself, because a job is mostly a long run of small choices about where your time goes. If you want the longer version of how these tools differ, our page on a personality test versus a career test goes through it.

Why rating yourself skews the answer

Most free quizzes use a rating scale. Each item is one statement, such as I stay calm under pressure, and you mark it from 1 to 5.

The next might be I enjoy trying new things and mark that too. Nothing stops you from giving both a 4, and most people do.

Psychologists have a name for it: social desirability, the urge to give the answer that makes you look good. Nobody is lying when it happens. People tend to picture themselves on their best days, so a rating scale ends up measuring self-image as much as habit.

A forced-choice quiz takes that pull away. Each item shows two statements, and both describe something most people would be glad to be good at.

You mark the one closer to what you do. Over many items, the choices you keep making form a pattern, and your scores come from that pattern.

This is also the line between a career aptitude test and a choice-based quiz. An aptitude test checks whether you can do something, such as solve a number problem in a minute or spot an error in a table. A forced-choice quiz asks what you tend to do when nobody is timing you.

Both are useful. Only the second tells you much about which job you would still choose a year in.

How career quizzes get used after you take them

A result only helps once you do something with it. The people who get the most from a career quiz tend to use it in three ways.

• As a shortlist. Pick two or three suggested jobs, check each one on O*NET OnLine for its daily tasks and pay, then read twenty job ads for each. Notice which ads make you lean in and which ones you skim.
• As a reason to talk to people. Find someone who does each job and ask them how they split their hours between tasks. Compare their answer to the choices you made in the quiz.
• As words for interviews. A result that says you prefer finishing work to starting it gives you a plain, honest way to describe yourself to a hiring manager.

Used this way, a career test mostly helps you rule jobs out quickly. That is often worth more than ruling one in, because it frees your search for the few options left.

It helps to see a finished result before you start, so below are the main kinds of result, then one sample worked through from start to finish.

A type-based quiz gives you a type name, a written profile and a list of fields that people with your type often enjoy. An interest quiz gives you two or three interest areas and a long list of matching jobs.

CareerExplorer adds a personality archetype and ranks your matches against a list of 1,500-plus careers and college degrees. A forced-choice quiz gives you scores on sliding scales, your main working style, and a handful of named roles to look into.

A sample result, from choices to job titles

This one is made up and shortened, but it follows the shape of a real forced-choice report. Marcus is 41.

He has spent twelve years as an account manager at a software company. He is good at it, and he is tired of it.

• Choices he kept making: finishing a plan over starting one, focused work over lively meetings, and fixing the process over chasing the next deal.
• His main working style: the Analyst pattern, which means careful, data-led decisions and a pull toward root causes.
• Kinds of work that fit: Operational and Integrative work, where the job is to keep systems running and to join up people and parts.
• Roles to look into: implementation manager, sales operations analyst and customer onboarding lead.

Each role points back to his answers. Implementation manager fits because he chose finishing over starting in most pairs. Sales operations analyst suits his pull toward quiet, data-heavy work.

Onboarding lead keeps the customer contact he is good at and swaps the quota for a process to run. None of the three asks him to start over, and that is usually what a mid-career reader needs to see.

Same answer twice? Retakes and real jobs

Accuracy means two things here. First, does the quiz give you the same result if you sit it a second time next month? Second, do the jobs it suggests turn out to suit people?

On the first point, type tests struggle. When people retake a four-letter type test a few weeks later, some people get a different set of letters the second time.

If your score on one letter sits close to the cutoff, a tired Tuesday can hand you the opposite letter. Interest quizzes hold up better, since what you like changes slowly.

On the second point, no quiz can promise much. A result is a strong guess about which jobs to test first. Job ads, conversations and a small trial project are how you check the guess.

Why one career test can beat another

Look for three things when you compare career tests.

1. It asks about behavior in trade-offs, not only about likes.
2. Its scores sit on sliding scales, not in either-or boxes.
3. It explains each suggested job in terms of your answers, so you can check the logic against your own life.

Whichever test does all three for the decision in front of you is the right one to take.

A quiz like this is most useful when a decision is coming and you have too many options, or none you like. How to use one changes with your stage of working life.

Using a career quiz for a career change

With ten or more years of work behind you, an interest-only quiz will mostly tell you things you knew already. You need one that reads your habits at work, since those habits travel with you into a new field. Look for suggested roles that reuse your strongest habits, so the move is a step sideways rather than a restart.

For more on this, see career tests built for adults, and the career change quiz guide compares tools made for people switching fields.

A free career quiz for students and recent graduates

Without much work history, your interests are the best evidence you have. Start with a free career quiz like O*NET's Interest Profiler, then shadow or intern in two of the fields it suggests. Do not treat the first list as final.

Your answers will shift once you have tried some work. A summer job counts as evidence too, so write down which tasks you offered to take and which ones you kept putting off.

For people stuck in a role they have outgrown

Some people enjoy their field and still feel worn down every week. That often points to the setting: the pace, the number of meetings, or how many hours you spend working alone. A quiz that measures habits can show which of those is the problem, so you can change teams or roles before you change industries.

It helps less if the job is already picked and you only need to get hired. In that case, put your time into applications, a portfolio and practice interviews. For a wider look at choosing a direction, the career path quiz guide covers the steps around the quiz itself.

What each one costs and whether you need an account

16Personalities costs nothing for your type and profile, sells a career suite on top, and needs no account for the free test. Truity's Career Personality Profiler gives a free summary without asking for your email.

Its full report costs a small fee, and Truity does not list the price before you finish. CareerExplorer is free but asks you to register before you start.

When a result goes stale

Interests and habits change slowly, so one good result can guide you for a few years. Take the quiz again after something big shifts. A new kind of role, a move into managing, a long break or a stretch of burnout all count.

If your answers have moved, lay the two results side by side. What changed tells you as much as what stayed.

Keep your old results. Two results from years apart often say more together than either one says alone.

When two quizzes disagree

It is common to take two quizzes and get two different lists. One says nurse, the other says data analyst, and it feels like one of them must be wrong.

Usually neither is. They measured different things, so start by asking what each one asked you about.

Then look for the overlap underneath the titles. A nurse and a data analyst both spend their days spotting small problems before they grow, and both follow careful routines. If two lists share a habit like that, the habit is the finding, and the job titles are just two places to use it.

Write the shared habit down in one sentence. Then look for a third job that uses it in a setting you would enjoy more, and test that one first.

If the lists share nothing at all, trust the quiz that asked about behavior over the one that asked about taste. Then check both against a few job ads.

Picking the one to take today

If you want a quick, free look at your interests or your type, take one of the free quizzes first. Our pages about the 16Personalities career test and the free career tests worth trying help you pick. If a big move is near and you want suggested roles you can check against your own habits, paying for a forced-choice test makes sense.

We sell one of these at Pigment, so weigh this paragraph with that in mind. It shows you two statements at a time, and you mark the one that sounds more like your normal working day. Your report then covers your strengths, your main working style and the types of work that suit you.

In the sample above, Marcus kept choosing finishing over starting, and that is why implementation manager made his list. Its formal validation research is not finished yet, so check the roles it suggests the way you would check any list.

Find roles that build on your best habits

Choose between two statements at a time for under twenty minutes. Your report covers your strengths, your work style and roles that let you change careers without a restart.

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