Can a Free Aptitude Test Really Tell You Which Career Would Suit You

Completing a free aptitude test can seem like a great idea when you're trying to decide on your next job or career move. But can such a test actually provide useful results?

The answer is that it depends what you're looking for. If you're expecting to be told that you're perfectly suited to a career as a doctor, a train driver or anything else for that matter, you'll be sorely disappointed, as they are unlikely to be that specific.

You are more likely to be told you score highly in communication, or analytical thinking or something else that at first glance looks quite vague.

The challenge you face is how to translate that information into something that can help with with your job / career search.

Aptitude tests are designed to assess your suitability for a particular task or role or situation. Aptitude tests online do this by asking you to complete a set of questions, then comparing your responses to the benchmarks they already have. It's important to be completely honest when answering questions, or you will end up skewing the results.

Each question asked normally has choice of answers. Answers can be yes / no, or you may be asked to rank things in order of what you enjoy the most or like the least. Sometimes a question may be hard to answer as none of the choices available really suit you. In this case you need to give the closest answer you can; generally these types of career guidance tests have enough questions that one unsure answer won't skew the results.

The best way to get useful results is to do more than one test.

It's easy to find a career aptitude test free online, in fact it's easy to find several. They will all operate in slightly different ways, and give results in different formats, but the more information you've got the better.

The next thing to do is start sorting it all out. Some results might give you a personality type, some might highlight character traits, others might score you against particular skills.

You need to identify the main features of each result and see how much correlation there is between the tests. For example one might say you're a good communicator, and another might say you have good verbal reasoning skills. These compliment each other and suggest you are adept at putting your point across.

This exercise may not result in you immediately knowing what career you would be suited for, but it will highlight your strengths and skill set and allow you to search for careers which utilise those strengths and skills.

If you're prepared to put the work into the analysis of the results then absolutely.

If you want something that will just tell you what you should do, then no -- though there is the option of paid tests which do tend to give more in depth results.

If you're feeling confused and really don't know which way to turn then this type of careers choices test can help clarify the situation for you, but they should be treated as an aide rather than an answer. When it comes to the 'what career should I choose' question, you should really take responsibility for it yourself rather than delegate it to a computer.

Free aptitude tests certainly have their place, and can provide useful information. However, ultimately it's what you do with that information that will be help you find your ideal career path.