What Career Suits You Best?
Throughout my final year of high school I remember scouring the web for a variety of different quizzes hoping that one of them would provide me with the answer I wanted. I was a teenager who felt she needed to decide what to do with her life. So, when a teacher suggested taking an online career test I took her advice and never looked back. I might have taken more online career tests than actual school tests. However, all the tests were variations of the same questions “rate your skill level for the following attributes” or your interests on a scale from not interested to very. In retrospect, I think I was so adamant on discovering new quizzes because I wasn’t satisfied with their responses. Yet again, how could I have been happy with the results when I did not know what I wanted them to be.
Fast forward five years and were in the present. Now that I know what path I am on and where I see my career going, these tests shouldn't be as unsettling. However, when taking a couple online ones I still find myself hesitating. I mean, how interested am I in “ redirecting people who become distracted to stay on task” or “ understanding world events and politics”? If I had the opportunity and knowledge to venture into all careers I would. What I’m trying to explain is that the former questions can potentially interest me but are context dependent. Does that mean I want a career in management or politics? No. This simply means that these quizzes pose a problem in which mismatched validity plays a factor. Due to the fact that my answer to the 60 something questions rely on other aspects about the depending situation, they are not reliable indicators of my interests nor of my career path. Would I like to know how to run a business? In theory, who wouldn’t? But answering a question about whether I like something I know nothing about is as helpful as not ever asking the question. How can I know if I want to run a business if I have no clue what that entails. Also, I found that while I was answering the questions I was not answering them with 100% honesty. For instance, I was trying to convince myself that I do “help people in need” a lot more than I actually do. Nobody wants to admit their faults, instead I saw myself answering the questions in ways that I thought I should have. Thus, not only are the questions of these online career tests context dependent but they further pose the problem of confirmation bias.
Ultimately, I now know that the questions on those quizzes are used to guide the testee into realizing what their passion is rather than informing them on what one should do. I don’t think anyone who takes those online quizzes truly believes that they only have those results as options but instead should view the results as ideas worth looking into.
