Quiz to see what career is right for you: see a sample result

Search for a career quiz and you get one of two things. One is a short quiz on a job site that asks a dozen questions and hands back three job titles.

The other is a list of ten or more quizzes, each with a link that sends you somewhere else. Neither shows you what a useful answer looks like, so you can't tell a good quiz from a weak one until you have already spent the time.

So this page works the other way around. First it sorts career quizzes into the two kinds that exist.

Then it shows a complete sample result. Then it makes one recommendation for where to start, free option included.

Two kinds of career quiz, and why the difference matters

Most free career quizzes are built around your interests. Would you rather fix an engine or write a report? Do you enjoy working with numbers?

These are interest quizzes. Most of them grow out of John Holland's model, which sorts interests into six groups, such as Realistic, Investigative and Social.

A good example is O*NET's free Interest Profiler, which asks you to rate a list of work activities and then lists jobs that match your top groups. Our career interest assessment guide covers this kind of test in more depth.

A second, smaller group asks how you work. How do you reach a decision? Do you plan a project before you start, or shape it as you go?

What happens to your focus in a day packed with meetings? These questions describe your habits, not your tastes. People who share one set of interests can need opposite jobs, because one wants to own a project from start to finish and the other wants to hand it off once the plan is set.

Both kinds are useful. Interest points you to fields worth exploring.

How you work points you to the role inside a field that you will find easy to show up for. Most free quizzes only measure the first, which is why their results so often feel close without feeling right.

Career quiz or career aptitude test

People use these names as if they meant the same thing, and they don't. A career aptitude test checks a skill, such as verbal reasoning, math or mechanical sense, and gives you a score. Employers and schools use them, and you can practice for one.

A career quiz asks about your preferences or habits, and there is no score to get right. A simple way to tell them apart: if it has a time limit and right answers, it is an aptitude test. If it asks what you prefer or how you usually act, it is a quiz.

An aptitude score shows what you can do on a timed test today. An interest quiz points to fields you might enjoy. Neither one picks a career for you.

That choice also needs what only you know about your life: your bills, your town and the people who depend on you. Our best career aptitude test page compares the skill tests if an employer has asked you to take one.

The weak spot in most career quizzes is the answer scale. When a quiz asks you to rate each statement from 1 to 5, you judge every statement on its own. Are you organized?

Sure. Creative? Yes.

Good with people? Mostly. By the last page your answers read like a list of good qualities, and the quiz has trouble telling which of them leads.

The fix is to make answers compete. Ask someone what they reach for first when a deadline moves up: a clear written plan, or a quick talk with the team.

Now the answer tells you something, because both are good habits and that person had to put one ahead. Tests built this way are called forced-choice, and it is the method Pigment uses.

What you do during the Pigment career test

On each screen you see two short statements about work, and you mark the one that is closer to your usual week. An invented example in the same style: "I like to settle the plan before I start" or "I like to start and adjust as I go." Neither side is better. Each answer nudges you toward one end of a scale, and over the whole test your answers build a picture of your decisions, your learning, your use of time and your teamwork.

Because you are placed on scales instead of sorted into a box, someone in the middle of a scale shows up as being in the middle. A type-based quiz has to push that person to one side or the other, and that is why the same person can land in another type on another day.

How much to trust a career quiz result

Be wary of any quiz that puts a percentage on its own accuracy. Figures like "90% accurate" travel from site to site with no study behind them. A fairer way to judge a career quiz is to ask three questions:

• Would it give you much the same result if you took it again next month?
• Would people who know you well recognize the person it describes?
• Does it explain what it measured, so you can check it against your own experience?

For comparison, the team behind the O*NET Interest Profiler publishes the research behind it, and that openness is a good sign in any test. Pigment's trait model is built on published research about job fit, strengths and engagement at work.

Pigment publishes no accuracy figure for its test. Judge your result the way you would judge advice from a sharp friend: hold it up against what you know about yourself.

From the first question to your report

Pigment's career test takes 18 minutes or so. There is no interview and no appointment; you answer on your own, at your own pace, and your report follows when you finish.

Answer for the way you work now, on an ordinary week, and not for the job you hope to get. That one habit makes more difference to the result than any other.

A few other habits help. Take the test when you have a quiet stretch, not between two calls, because rushed answers drift toward whatever feels safe. Trust your first pull on each screen; if you stop to argue with yourself, you start answering for the person you think you should be.

And if a pair of statements both sound wrong, mark the one that is less wrong. Those close calls are often where the most useful parts of a result come from.

A free interest quiz usually ends with a short code, such as SIA, plus matching jobs. That list is useful for browsing. It rarely tells you why those jobs came up, or which of them would suit how you prefer to spend a working day.

A sample result, section by section

Below is an invented person and a shortened version of what Pigment's report would tell her. She is an illustration, not a customer. Maya is 41 and has led customer support teams for twelve years.

She is good at it, and she is tired of it. She wants to know whether to move up, move sideways or leave.

• Strengths. Her strongest results cluster around keeping a team coordinated and turning messy problems into clear steps. Each strength comes with advice on using it more on purpose.
• How Your Mind Works. She takes in information best through concrete examples and conversation, and she slows down when handed a long written spec.
• Work Types. She leans Integrative, the work of combining people, parts and ideas, with Operational close behind.
• Work Styles. She leans toward the Pragmatist pattern. She cuts a problem down to what will work and says it plainly.
• Collaborating with Different Work Styles. It flags where she and a boss who leans toward the Analyst pattern are likely to clash, and how to settle it.
• Career Alignment. It suggests roles such as implementation lead, operations program manager and customer success director. Each one comes with a short note on which of her results led to it.
• What You Would Be Good At. Kinds of tasks she is likely to do well, beyond what her current title covers.
• Rare Traits. The traits that are uncommon in her results, each marked by how uncommon it is.

Look at what this does for Maya. Her current job uses her coordination strengths, but it also keeps her answering the same complaints all day.

The suggested roles keep the part she is good at and drop the part she has had enough of. That is a career change she can make without starting over.

Compare that with what a typical free interest quiz would have told her. Maya enjoys organizing people and solving problems, so she would likely get a code built around Social and Enterprising interests, and a list that includes customer service manager, the job she already has.

The quiz would be right, and it would not help. The difference is that her report shows why the job fits on paper and still wears her out, and that is the part she needed to see.

Using the result to make a decision

A result helps you decide only if you use it to narrow your options. Take the three or four roles that came up and check each one in the Occupational Outlook Handbook, a free federal guide that lists pay, training and job growth.

Cross out any role that fails on money or location. Then find one person who does each remaining job, and ask what they would drop from their week if they had the choice.

You can also use the result when you apply. "I'm at my best turning a messy problem into a plan other people can follow" tells a hiring manager far more than "I'm a people person."

The same quiz can help three different people. Each of them should read the result with a different worry in mind.

Students choosing a first direction

If you are in school, you have almost nothing to lose by guessing wrong, and that freedom is the upside. The risk is that with no work history, you are picturing work you have not tried yet.

Begin with a no-cost interest quiz, use it to pick two or three fields, and then test them cheaply with a class, a summer job or a short chat with someone in the field. Our free career quiz page compares the free options.

Adults changing careers

After ten or fifteen years at work, the worry is different. You paid for your skills with years of your life, and you don't want to throw them away. A good career quiz for career changers shows you which of your habits carry over.

Answer for how you work today, and look for suggested roles that reuse your strongest habits somewhere new. Our career test for adults page covers this group in more depth, and our self-assessment for career changers helps if the bigger question is whether to change at all.

Job seekers who need an answer soon

If you are out of work or about to be, time is the pressure. You don't need a perfect answer. You need a short list of role types you can apply to this month.

Use a quiz to narrow your search to two or three kinds of roles, then write your applications for those. Applications written for one kind of role are easier to make sharp than fifty written for anything.

One warning for this group. When money is tight, it is tempting to answer the quiz for the job that is hiring right now.

Resist it. A result that matches the listings in front of you tells you nothing new, and a role you take only because it was open is the one you are most likely to be searching away from again within a year or two.

Seen the sample? Get your own career result

Pigment's career test studies how you choose, plan and team up, then suggests roles to explore, with a note on what led to each.

Design Your Career

Here is the one recommendation. If you have ten minutes and want ideas, take O*NET's free Interest Profiler.

If a big decision is close, such as leaving a job, choosing a degree or turning down an offer, add a test that maps your working habits. Most people get the most from doing both, free one first.

What the quiz costs, and the free options

Free options exist, and they are worth your time. O*NET's Interest Profiler costs nothing, needs no account and is paid for with U.S. government funds. For a free career quiz, start with O*NET, and pay for more depth once you have a choice to make.

Getting your results after you finish

With most free quizzes, results appear on screen when you finish, so save or screenshot them before you close the page. Some job-site quizzes ask for your email first and send the results there. With Pigment, your results come as a written report once you finish the test, and you can reopen it whenever a new decision comes up.

Choosing a career once you have your results

A result is a starting list, and you narrow it in three steps. First, cut any role that fails on pay or location, using the job profiles on O*NET OnLine, which show daily tasks, pay and outlook. Second, talk to one person in each role that is left.

Third, test a small slice of the work, such as a weekend project or a short course, before you commit. Our guide to knowing what career is right for you covers the signs that a choice is holding up.

Finding your interests before you start

If you freeze at the first question, do this first. Write down the last five times you lost track of time, at work or outside it. Then write down five tasks you put off every time.

Look at what the first list shares, such as building, explaining, organizing or fixing. Any quiz makes more sense once you have those patterns in front of you.

Career quiz or personality test: which fits a career choice

A career personality quiz describes your temperament in broad strokes, often as a four-letter type. That can be fun, and it can help you talk about yourself.

For choosing a job, a test that asks about work directly and scores you on scales gives you more to go on. For a wider map of every kind of test, see our career test guide.