How does one decide one’s career? How does one decide and take a decision that may shape the life excellently or doom it forever? It is not as if nobody has the right or opportunity to choose their own vocations. Circumstances decide the way things will go. But it is true that many people when asked, will say that they would prefer a different job or career of their own taste and liking.

Most people now have a formal education before they step in the real world where each one is to his own. Careers start at a very junior level. There are very few people who actually start at the top. They either inherit or are extremely brilliant. You may consider artists. Art is considered by most of us as a hobby. Very few venture from the beginning to become artists for a living, since it is well known that an artist might take years before his work is recognized and gets some value. Till then they are non-entities and have to depend on some other vocation for their living.

May times careers are decided by an individuals belief in his/her capability. Bill Gates left Harvard to co-found Microsoft.  If he had continued at Harvard, he might not have reached where he is today. He might have gone the conventional way of taking up the best job offering a good salary. Instead he pursued his natural talent in software. I needn’t talk further about him. People actually take up jobs and see how they cope up with the same. It has been seen in many cases, where executives keep on flitting between different jobs and departments and ultimately take up something else which is very
different from what they started with. Its this experimentation which helps them discover their natural talent. People learn about their own temperament with experience. They slowly move towards their goal. Very few are able to transform their avocations into their vocations.

People with determination try and succeed wonderfully in their own interest and work. Kalpana Chawla, the astronaut on the ill fated Columbia, nursed a wish to fly into space and become an astronaut. Scientists like Einstein, Edison with their independent thinking and research reached a position which is unrivaled. Abraham Lincoln chose politics and social work as his line and after numerous failures, became one of the most revered Presidents of the US. Gandhi and Martin Luther King chose the path of social change. They pursued their hearts and achieved their goals.

The opportunity for pursuing one’s natural talent always exists. Its how one recognizes the same and then pursues the instinct that decides one’s fate.

A career placement test can strike fear into the heart of even the most confident employee.  Think of the TV show, The Apprentice and you start to think about the extremes of career placement tests, but there are various career tests now in regular use.  But many job candidates are unaware of why these tests are used.

The main purpose behind a career placement test is to assess your suitability for a position.  It may well be that your qualifications are excellent and that you outshine all the other candidates on paper, but when you are in the ‘real world’, how do you cope then?  This can be assessed using the placement test.

Employers are becoming ever more choosy as more and more well qualified candidates are trying for fewer and fewer jobs.  How do you sort out who is really good and who isn’t?

Employers are also keen to assess qualities that often cannot be qualified at an interview alone.  How do you cope with stress and pressure?  Are you emotionally intelligent as well as academically intelligent?  How can you relate to people?  Are you a member of a team?  Are you trustworthy?

All these questions can be answered with a career placement test, but they cannot really be assessed by employers in any other way.  People will always say that they cope well with pressure, that they are hard working and trustworthy, a real ‘team player’ etc, yet in reality they may be out purely for themselves and about as trustworthy as a snake, hence the need for a career placement test.

These tests are also beneficial to candidates because they allow candidates an insight into what the job is really like.  Then they can decide if they want the job, or if it really is not as good as it was advertised as.  So they can benefit the potential employee and not just the employer and as such should be viewed as a mutual assessment rather than just a one way appraisal.