Assessments

Personality and interest assessments can be a helpful and interactive way to explore your interests and learn more about yourself. The Strommen Center offers various assessment options and has access to other tools that have assessments embedded in them. We’ve listed them all in one place to help you find the ones best suited for you.

Important Information Regarding Assessments

As insightful and helpful as career assessments can be, keep in mind that they are simply one tool available to provide insight and guidance. They are not definitive measures of your abilities or potential, nor are they meant to categorize or label you. These assessments are just one of the many options available in your toolbox for exploration journey.

Guided Self-Assessments

These assessments are available to all students but may require an access code from a Strommen career coach to complete or are made more beneficial by meeting with a coach to discuss your results.

Focus 2 Career has 5 main assessments. They include:

  • Work Interests
  • Personality
  • Values
  • Skills
  • Leisure

There are also 3 additional career planning tools for self-assessment, which include:

  • Career planning involvement
  • Academic Strengths
  • Career Readiness

We recommend starting with the work interests and personality assessments, as well as the career planning foundations.

For a look at what these assessments entail and what they’ll help you learn, watch the below video from Cal State LA:

To better understand your results (including the career planning assessments), watch the below video from UConn or make an appointment with an Augsburg career coach!

Visit this resource for more information on Focus 2 Career and how to utilize it.

Previously known as StrengthsFinder, this assessment helps you identify your talents through 34 different themes. Through ranking what talents you utilize the most, you can learn how to play to your strengths and apply them throughout your life.

To take the assessment, please contact a career coach for an access code.

For more on CliftonStrengths, watch the short video below.

Created by the Center for Dependable Strengths, this peer-assisted group process helps you identify strengths that you depend on and value in your day-to-day life. Using storytelling and active listening, this exercises uses groups of 3-4 individuals to respond and help each individual recognize their unique strengths. If you are interested in using this workshop for your student group, class, or in another on-campus context, please email careers@augsburg.edu.

Self-Directed Assessments

These assessments are available at anytime and can be used to guide your individual research during career and major exploration.

Aside from its database of career information, O*NET also offers the Interest Profiler, which can help you discover your interests and how the might relate to the world of work.

Visit this resource for more information on O*NET.

Along with many other tools, Career One Stop offers three assessments:

For more information about what these assessments can and cannot do, visit Career One Stop’s Career Assessments page.

A career site for Minnesotans, Career Force offers a wide range of research and job search options. They also offer several assessments:

  • Employment readiness assessment: This assessment helps you formulate a plan around what first steps to take when looking for employment.
  • Interest assessment: Matches you to occupations depending on the interest categories you score strongest in.
  • Skills assessment: Shows you occupations based on the skill categories you score strongest in.

Created by the non-profit VIA Institute on Character, this inventory (similar to CliftonStrengths) uses scientific research to create common language around 24 strengths and values people commonly use. This free to take assessment allows you to view your top character strengths and help you understand how they can be applied to better know yourself, deal with challenges, and make the world a better place.

Take the free assessment here or read more about the 24 character strengths. The assessment does provide information for interpreting your results and may be best understood by discussing your results with a career coach.

For an introduction on VIA Character Strengths, watch the video below.

Is there an assessment you’ve used in class that our office should consider? Let us know at careers@augsburg.edu or meet with our Career Collaborative to discuss opportunities.

A Note on MBTI

Many institutions offer the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) or similar personality assessments. The Strommen Center has decided not to offer these assessments for a variety of reasons due to limitations with the assessment including:

  • cultural bias
  • reliability and validity
  • dichotomies/vague binaries

Due to our values of equity and transparency, we have opted to to not offer MBTI. A free similar option is available for those who would like to take the inventory called 16 Personalities, however an assessment takers should know that these categorization methods are not directly tied to career outcomes. Since the Strommen Center wants to focus on inventories that can link directly to career development, we have decided not to offer services catered to this inventory.

For questions, please reach out to the Strommen Center. For those curious about the shortcomings of the MBTI, we recommend The Personality Brokers by Merve Emre.