The Ancient Greeks were on to something when they recommended to “know thyself.” Career tests can be helpful tools in the self-assessment process. They can provide vital information about key personal attributes that need to be considered as you try and identify a career path that fits who you are. An occupation that doesn’t match your personal attributes won’t be a good fit and it will lead to stress and a host of other challenges.

Each of you is unique and has a unique pattern or profile of personal attributes. Career success usually comes to those who best match their profile to their life circumstances. Think of your personal pattern as your polar star or your guide to your ideal career. Career tests are your map and compass to help you find your way to your polar star. As you become aware of your important guiding attributes, you will have a better chance of a fulfilling career.

While there is a lot of work you can do yourself, having an experienced guide (or career counselor) who can identify which career test might be most beneficial can make the process much more efficient. There are a lot of career tests out there, some more helpful than others. Each of them assesses one or more of your personal attributes. The following are some of the attributes that are helpful to explore during your career search. Future pages will provide more detail and specific career test options for each category.

Abilities (also referred to as aptitudes) are your natural, innate or “hard-wired” talents. While perhaps one of the most important attributes in your profile, your natural aptitudes are probably the hardest for you to articulate. Here again you have a unique profile of abilities that help define what comes most easily for you. This ability profile can be assessed through aptitude testing.

No matter what career stage you might find yourself in, you have already learned (and forgotten) some skills. Unlike abilities, skills are learned through experience and forgotten through neglect. Your abilities might make it easy for you to learn a foreign language, but without the actual learning and skills in an actual language that ability is not really advancing your career. Self assessment of your transferable skills will be of key importance in your career search.

Your interests and passions drive your motivation. Without motivation you are likely to achieve lackluster results. Therefore, identification of what you are drawn to is crucial to determining the next phase of your career.

The word "personality" originates from the Latin persona, which means mask. Your personality is actually a combination of characteristics or qualities that distinguish your behavior and impact how you perceive and relate in the world. While our personalities can change, by and large, they tend to be rather stable over time. A wide variety of career tests have been designed to measure an even larger number of personality traits. Nevertheless, awareness of some of the key aspects of your personality can help steer you towards some professions and away from others.

Your values represent your principles and standards and serve to guide your behavior to match what you consider most important in life. While values are deeply personal they can also be communal in nature (e.g., cultural, political, religious). Attending to your values is important in all of your endeavors, so a careful evaluation of what is most important to you should be a part of any career search.

Limits can be a blessing or a curse and we all have them. We all cherish our freedoms and we generally don’t like to be limited but such is the human condition. Part of the human condition is to constantly test your limits as well. It is important to realize that our perceived limits are not always our actual limits and that many of our limits are self-imposed, in some cases for good reasons and in others for not so good reasons. Your limitations define the space in which you live your life and represent your boundaries.

Your goals are your desired results. They represent the object of your efforts and what you are trying to achieve on your career journey. Goals are often thought of in terms of time frame, so we can have immediate, short-term, intermediate and long-term goals. Like values, goals can be personal or corporate. Clearly articulating your goals will give your career search greater direction.