To assist you in determining how your interests and habits of mind intersect with your career aspirations, the Career Center administers interest and personality inventories such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Strong Interest Inventory and the Campbell Interest and Skill Survey.
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)The MBTI determines a personality type based on your preferences for how you process information, make decisions, and interact with the world around you. Knowing your own preferences and learning about other people's can help you understand where your special strengths are, what kind of work you might enjoy, and how people with different preferences can relate to each other and be valuable to society.
Strong Interest Inventory (SII)The SII is an interest inventory that explores your level of interest in a wide range of familiar areas (i.e. occupations, occupational activities, hobbies, leisure activities, school subjects, and types of people). SII scores measure your interests, not your abilities. It tells you about your pattern of interests and how your interests compare with those of people from a wide variety of occupations. Also available for those who are making mid-career changes, have extensive work experience, or have already obtained a BA/BS or higher degree, the SII Professional Version may be more appropriate. Your career counselor can help determine which instrument can best meet your needs.
Your SII answers will be analyzed in four ways: first, as General Occupational Themes, for similarity to six overall patterns reflecting an orientation to work; second, according to Basic Interest Scales, for similarity to clusters of specific activities; third, according to Occupational Scales, for similarity to the interests of men and women who have been satisfactorily employed in more than 100 occupations for at least three years; and fourth, according to Personal Style Scales, which measure your comfort level in work, learning, leadership, and risk-taking situations. Understanding your results on the General Occupational Themes, Basic Interests Scales, Occupational Scales, and Personal Style Scales, which represent your own individual pattern of interests, likes and dislikes, will help you plan your career and deal with career changes.
Campbells Interest and Skill SurveyThis instrument helps with career decision making by identifying self-reported interests and skills. The scores of this survey are reported in four different ways. The Orientation scale covers seven broad themes of occupational interests and skills (Influencing, Organizing, Helping, Creating, Analyzing, Producing, Adverturing). The Basic Interest and Skills scale further describes the qualities of the seven themes described to you in the Orientations scales The Occupational scales compares your responses to the responses of those who are satisfactorily employed within the profession. Because formal education and tolerance for working with people is critical to career planning, The Academic Focus scale along with the Extroversion scale will inform the test taker as to their preferences in these two areas. Within each of these scales, two scores will be reported: their interest and their self-reported skill within that area. A worksheet is provided to assist both counselor and client in determining areas they might Develop, Pursue, Explore or Avoid.