Insights and CareerLeader Assessments

Personality Assessments may help you develop self-awareness 

Like I promised in my previous post, I will discuss the many useful applications of the Insights personality assessment and the CareerLeader profile report. Both are very complementary assets for understanding and developing your professional persona and career paths.

Insights Personality Assessment
The Insights Personality Assessment has by far been the most accurate personality profile I have taken thus far. Although it was very long (approx. 30-45 mins), the 23 page report showcases both your key strengths and weaknesses along with how your effectively communicate to achieve objectives, how others may perceive your managing style, and suggestions for continued development.
 
According to the Insights Learning and Development company the profile is "Generated from several hundred thousand permutations of statements, this profile is unique... and that that a good understanding of self, both strengths and weaknesses, enables individuals to develop effective strategies for interaction and can help them to better respond to the demands of their environment." The report starts by giving a detailed on "personal style" and later gives a candid explanation of how the taker interacts with others.
 
The way that the report is organized with a table of contents makes it easy to navigate the report and to reference in the future. A practical application of the information contained in the report is to assess how to interact within a team setting. For example, the report will help you recognize that you have a tendency to micro-manage tasks and how that may be perceived by others as distrustful or arrogant instead of dedication to getting the task accomplished. This report has been beneficial to me in regards to how my actions may be perceived by other personality types.

Lastly, the report concludes with a "color wheel" and color metrics based on personal preference for introversion/extroversion, feeling/thinking, and your conscious ("At work") persona as well as your less-conscious ("At home") persona.

CareerLeader Professional Report

As a new MBA candidate, I already know that these next 2 years are going to go by with increasing speed. As a result, it is very important to engage in career steps that will get me into the position that will not only be monetarily rewarding, but will also match my values and strengthen my expertise.

The CareerLeader report is very useful in regards to understanding personal underlying motivators for career success, preference for structure, organizational culture among other key elements for professional well being. A few aspects of the report I disagreed with, especially the comparison of industries that I would "fit" with.

A few general tips that I believe will be helpful for all MBA candidates:

1. Think about how to leverage your assets -- not only your work experience, personal contacts and relevant abilities, but also your strongest interests (as assessed by CareerLeader).
2. Be patient, and think -- and act -- strategically. If you want to change what you do functionally (moving from your current role into finance, marketing, sales, etc.) and change the industry you're working in, you may not be able to make both changes in one career move. Consider changing one or the other (so you're in your preferred function, but your less preferred industry or vice versa), then make the other change a few years from now.
3. Remember, there are usually several ways to get from where you are now to your career goal. Consider all the possible routes to travel, consider their probabilities of success, consider the costs and benefits of each, look for still more alternate strategies, then choose one.
4. If you're a student, try taking a summer internship in the career area that you're considering. You might find out that you don't like it as much as you thought you would -- good to know now! .
5. If you are graduating soon, the same rule applies only with a longer time horizon. If you have an idea of what you'd like to do both functionally (finance, marketing, sales, etc.) and with a particular industry (food/beverage, telecommunications, etc.), you may not be able to satisfy both preferences.

 Overall, I like the supplementary information provided in the report such as the tips for discovering organizational culture and how to strengthen business skills but the actually personal career assessment wasn't as useful to me. What I will take from both reports is that is is better to understand what you want professionally, why you want it, and what are the underlying factors that can help you succeed as well as those that can hinder your objectives.