Find Your Path: Career Assessments for Students
Discover which careers match your interests, personality, and strengths through comprehensive career assessments designed to guide your college major selection and career pathway decisions.
What Are Career Assessments?
Career assessments are structured evaluation tools that help students understand their interests, personality traits, work preferences, and natural strengths. These assessments provide objective insights into which careers, college majors, and educational pathways align with who you are and how you prefer to work.
Unlike vague career exploration activities, professional career assessments use validated frameworks to measure specific dimensions of career fit. By comparing your responses to patterns observed in successfully employed professionals across hundreds of occupations, these tools identify careers where you're likely to find satisfaction and success.
Taking multiple career assessments during middle school and high school provides the self-knowledge foundation necessary for confident decisions about programs of study, endorsements, course selection, and postsecondary planning. Assessment results translate confusion into clarity by revealing patterns you might not recognize independently.
Career Interest Assessments
Interest profilers measure your preferences for different work activities, subjects, and career fields. These assessments identify what you enjoy doing and connect those preferences to compatible occupations using frameworks like Holland Codes (RIASEC). Results suggest career clusters and specific jobs that match your interests, helping narrow broad career exploration to focused pathways worth investigating through coursework and experiences.
Personality Assessments
Personality tests evaluate your behavioral tendencies, communication styles, decision-making processes, and work environment preferences. Tools like Myers-Briggs (MBTI) and Big Five assessments reveal how you naturally interact, process information, and manage tasks. Understanding your personality type helps identify careers with compatible work cultures, whether you thrive in collaborative or independent settings, prefer structure or flexibility, and excel through analytical or creative approaches.
Task Preference Assessments
Task-based assessments identify which specific work activities energize you versus drain your energy. These tools present concrete job tasks—analyzing data, persuading others, operating equipment, helping people—and measure your preferences. Task assessments help differentiate between careers within the same industry by revealing whether you prefer hands-on or analytical work, routine or varied responsibilities, independent or collaborative projects.
Compare All Three Assessment Types
Career Interest
| Assessment | Cost | Time |
|---|---|---|
| O*NET Interest Profiler Holland Codes (RIASEC) |
FREE | 30-40 min |
| Texas Career Check Holland + TX Clusters |
FREE | 25-35 min |
| Career OneStop Holland Codes |
FREE | 15-20 min |
| Indigo Pathway Interest + Skills |
FREE | 20-25 min |
| BigFuture Career Quiz Simplified Screening |
FREE | 10-15 min |
| Princeton Review Quiz Custom Matching |
FREE | 15-20 min |
| Keirsey Holland Code Holland + Personality |
FREE | 25-35 min |
Personality
| Assessment | Cost | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Myers-Briggs (MBTI) 16 Personality Types |
$49.95 | 15-20 min |
| TYPEFINDER® MBTI-style 16 Types |
FREE | 15-20 min |
| Jung's Typology Test Jungian Psychology |
FREE | 10-15 min |
| Big Five Personality OCEAN Model |
FREE | 15-20 min |
| CliftonStrengths 34 Talent Themes |
$24.99 | 30-45 min |
Task Preference
| Assessment | Cost | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Career Task Preference Daily Work Tasks |
FREE | 20-25 min |
| Skills Matcher Transferable Skills |
FREE | 15-20 min |
📚 Assessment Information Sources
Assessment Details: All assessment descriptions, time estimates, cost information, and framework details are compiled from the official websites and documentation of each respective assessment provider as of 2024. Specific assessment tools include:
• O*NET Interest Profiler - U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET Resource Center (mynextmove.org)
• Texas Career Check - Texas OnCourse Career Planning System (texasoncourse.org)
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator - The Myers & Briggs Foundation and official MBTI assessment providers
• Big Five Personality Test - Based on the Five-Factor Model developed through decades of psychological research
• CliftonStrengths - Gallup's official strengths assessment (gallup.com/cliftonstrengths)
Note: Pricing and availability may change. Students should verify current costs and access requirements directly with assessment providers. Free assessments remain accessible at no cost through their respective platforms.
Ready to Discover Your Career Direction?
Career assessments provide the self-knowledge foundation for confident postsecondary planning. Get personalized guidance interpreting your results and creating an action plan.
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