While many people doubt the usefulness of online assessment tests, these questionnaires are tools that can help you gain information about yourself that can provide a sense of direction you may feel you lack.
There are numerous types of assessment tests available online, yet some of the most informative kinds are Personality Tests, Skills Based Tests, Aptitude Tests and Interest Inventories.
Why Do I Need to Use an Online Assessment?
How well do you think you know yourself? We often think we know everything about ourselves, after all, if we don’t who does?
Yet, have you ever heard someone describing you to someone else and wondered whom they were talking about?
Is it that they simply don’t know much about you or is it possible we don’t know everything about who we truly are while others may notice characteristics of which we aren’t fully aware?
Although, we generally think we know our true selves, we frequently don’t realize that there are certain aspects of ourselves of which we aren’t entirely conscious.
That’s why when asked to write a description of who we are we sometimes freeze unsure of what to say. However, when asked specific questions about how we view ourselves, it becomes much easier to provide a profile that represents us.
This is the benefit of structured assessment methods. When asked to describe yourself you may come up with a few general characteristics.
Yet when using well-designed questionnaires you find unexpected things listed in your results.
At the same time, when reading the summary nothing is surprising, in fact you feel the information accurately depicts your true nature, skills, preferences, values, or other areas of focus included in the questionnaire.
Personality Assessments Can Be Useful
Personality largely makes us who we are. It influences the decisions we make and the way we live our lives. Our personality defines the way we see and interact with the world.
Therefore, it’s important to know about your personality since it is one of the main factors that enables you to achieve your goals easily and can help you become a more satisfied and contented individual by being able to better match your personality style with the choices you make in life.
One method you can use to determine your personality style is online assessment tools.
There are a variety of personality tests to choose from, usually based on a particular personality theory which includes a set number of personality characteristics.
These tests evaluate your individual traits, values, and preferences to establish your overall personality style.
Personality tests can help you better understand why you act and feel in particular ways, indicate why you are more comfortable interacting with certain types of people, or suggest why you react the way you do to different situations.
The information you obtain from such assessments can also help you make better decisions about various life roles, determine how you best cope with stress, and let you choose how to make the most of your free time.
Skills Based, Aptitude and Interest Related Assessments
Can you define all the skills you possess and everything you are capable of achieving?
These two factors are much more concrete than personality characteristics so you likely believe you know all of your skills since you were the one to develop them, which required aptitude.
However, similar to personality characteristics, you may not be fully aware of many things you are capable of doing because you haven’t developed certain aptitudes yet or used certain skills in some time.
Additionally, the skills we’ve developed and the talents we’ve used are frequently based on our interests.
While some may have been learned or utilized during our education, employment or other required activities, we have a wide variety of skills and talents that we’ve learned or accessed due to using them for activities that appeal to us.
There are several types of tests that assess skills, aptitudes, and interests.
• Skills Based Tests – These evaluate a learned skill set, often in relation to a single area such as literacy, computer related abilities or an occupation. Some of these tests may assess a larger skill set through evaluating skills across a number of domains.
• Achievement Tests – These are similar to skills based tests except they specifically assess a given area. They are designed to test what you already know in a defined field.
You’ve likely come across them during your education, however, they’re also used in the workplace to assess the best candidate for promotion.
• Aptitude Tests – Also sometimes called abilities tests, these measure your potential for later learning. This type of test often includes an assessment of problem solving ability, and various types of reasoning abilities such as logical, abstract, or spatial reasoning.
Most frequently used in employment situations, you can use an online aptitude test to discover your abilities and talents.
• Interest Based Tests – These are exactly what their name suggests – an assessment of what areas interest you. These assessments may be used to help guide your educational decisions, assist you in making career related decisions, or determine the most suitable jobs for you if you’re retiring from the military.
When You Turn a Keen Eye Inside…
Not every online assessment tool provides useful implications that you can put into practice in your life.
However, tests that are designed with the user in mind can help you clarify your personality style, preferences, abilities, interests and values, as well as provide suggestions related to the implications of your results to help you obtain your goals.
Self-help assessments can provide a great deal of information that can give you the knowledge to help you live a life in which you flourish and succeed.
If you’re ready to dive into the self assessment tests available here, look at what’s available on the self tests page and get started.