What are the Best Career Tests?
The best career quiz for you depends on your personal needs – what hidden corners of your potential are you eager to unearth? In this article, we’ll look at some of the most popular career assessments to help you unlock your professional superpowers.
Choosing your ideal career can feel like navigating a labyrinth – exciting, intimidating and full of potential twists and turns. But unlike wandering aimlessly through an ancient maze, career exploration comes with a map to help you chart your journey: the career quiz.
What motivates you to go to work each day? While a hefty paycheck and stellar benefits are alluring aspects of any job, the most rewarding career will also align seamlessly with your inherent strengths and talents.
Career assessments can reveal key insights about your interests, values, personality traits and aptitudes. This heightened self-awareness can help you better understand what types of roles and work environments are best suited for you. And with more awareness, you’re better equipped to make informed decisions about your career path or field of study.
The best career quiz for you depends on your personal needs – what hidden corners of your potential are you eager to unearth? In this article, we’ll look at some of the most popular career assessments to help you unlock your professional superpowers.
Top 8 Career Quizzes - At a Glance
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Truity’s Career Personality Profiler (Best overall career planning quiz)
- Holland Code Test (Best free career planning quiz & best early career quiz)
- CliftonStrengths® (Best strengths-based career quiz)
- MAPP Assessment (Best motivations-based career planning quiz)
- TypeFinder® for Career Planning (Best Myers-Briggs-based career quiz)
- Big Five Assessment (Best workplace personality test)
- DISC Assessment (Best workplace communication test)
- Enneagram for the Workplace (Best workplace motivations test)
What to Look for in a Career Quiz
There is no one-size-fits-all career quiz. Different tests have different goals, so finding the right one for you will depend on what you’re looking to achieve. Research-backed tests can reveal unique insights into your innate strengths, motivations, personality traits and what kinds of careers may be the most fulfilling for you.
Some career quizzes, like the Holland Code Test, allow you to explore multiple career options that align with your strengths while others, such as the DISC assessment, focus more on your unique skills in the workplace. The best career quiz for you will depend on your goals and where you’re currently at in your career journey.
When evaluating the quality of a career quiz, there are a number of factors to consider:
- Credibility: The credibility of a career test is based on the legitimacy of the company that created the test and the reliability of the test itself. Customer reviews and third-party reviews can shed light on how credible the testing company is. The test itself should be based on modern psychological research and have been tested to ensure reliability and accuracy.
- Cost/value: There are few quality career tests that are completely free, but a good career test should be reasonably priced for the value it delivers. A high-value test should offer actionable insights that you can use to understand your career potential and take necessary steps toward greater career fulfillment.
- Personalization: When it comes to the best career tests, the level of customization makes all the difference. The more generalized a test is, the less beneficial the results will be for the test taker. Your career test results should be as unique as you are.
- Ease of use: Test questions should be easy to understand and answer, making the quiz accessible for most adults. In the world of career testing, longer tests are not necessarily better, so look for tests that take 30 minutes or less to complete. What’s more, the website should be user-friendly and provide excellent customer service.
Based on these factors, we’ve identified the best career quizzes. Explore our recommendations below to discover the best quiz for you.
Best Career Quizzes of 2024
Truity’s Career Personality Profiler: Best Overall Career Test
As one of the most comprehensive career aptitude tests available, the Career Personality Profiler provides a 30+ page report full of deep insights into your career personality type. The report includes:
- Your career strengths and challenges
- Your thinking and problem-solving styles
- Your motivations
- How you interact with others
- How you contribute to a team
- How you manage tasks and projects
- Your top career interest areas
- Your top career matches
The career assessment is based on two scientifically validated models for career planning: The Big Five model of personality and the Holland Code model. By combining these powerful career matching systems, the quiz determines which careers are most likely to match your aptitude and satisfy your individual personality and motivational factors.
Why we like it:
- Best all-around career test
- Easy-to-read, in-depth report with personalized results (view a sample report)
- Based on science-backed theories and research
- High credibility with an average customer star rating of 4.9 out of 5
- Only takes 10-15 minutes to complete
- Basic results are free (full report is behind a paywall)
Holland Code Career Test: Best Free Career Test & Best Early Career Test
The Holland Code is one of the most widely used career assessments worldwide. This free career quiz provides a detailed look at how you score among six interest areas or “types”: Builder, Thinker, Creator, Helper, Persuader and Organizer. The assessment scores your interest in each area and provides a list of suitable careers based on your personality. You can also use Truity’s career search tool to find more careers for your Holland Code type.
As a service for new graduates and those earlier in their careers, Truity offers its 10-page Holland Code report, detailing your job preferences and potential career types, for free.
Why we like it:
- Best test for students or those planning their first career
- Results are free
- Based on science-backed theories and research
- Only takes 5-10 minutes to complete
- Great for snapshot results (report is less in-depth than similar paid products)
CliftonStrengths
The CliftonStrengths® assessment, formerly known as Clifton StrengthsFinder, is a popular career assessment tool developed by Gallup. By identifying your top strengths, it aims to help individuals uncover their natural talents and provides personalized insights that contribute to career success and satisfaction.
Why we like it:
- Best strengths-based career test for professionals at all career levels
- Backed by Gallup, a research-based consulting company with a longstanding history
- Highly personalized results (though basic results are pricier than similar tests)
MAPP Assessment
Unlike career tests that focus on personality or skills, the MAPP (Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potential) test focuses on motivation, or what you are driven to do for work. The full report, available in six languages, is divided into several categories:
- Interest in job
- Temperament
- Aptitude
- People
- Things
- Data
- Reasoning
- Mathematical
- Language
The free report provides a high-level overview of each category. To learn more, paid reports are available, although it is one of the pricier options among career tests.
Why we like it:
- Best motivation-based career test
- Available in six languages
- Also useful for HR processes like recruiting, selection and promotions
- Only takes 15 minutes to complete
TypeFinder® for Career Planning
If you’re familiar with the 16 type system of personality developed by Myers and Briggs, then you may have heard of the TypeFinder – a personality test that determines your four letter personality type based on four dimensions of personality:
- Introversion vs Extraversion
- Sensation vs Intuition
- Thinking vs Feeling
- Judging vs Perceiving
Truity’s TypeFinder for Career Planning is a career test that uses the 16 type theory combined with the Holland Code system to identify ideal career paths for your personality type. The TypeFinder for Career Planning reveals:
- Your four-letter personality type
- Your career type (a combination of your four-letter type and your Holland Code type)
- Your values and motivations
- How others see you
- Your communication style
- Your leadership style
- Your teamwork style
- Your career interest areas
- Your top career matches
- Your personal strengths and potential blind spots
Why we like it:
- Best career test based on Myers and Briggs theory
- Easy-to-read, in-depth report with personalized results (view a sample report)
- High credibility with an average customer star rating of 4.9 out of 5
- Only takes 10-15 minutes to complete
Big Five Assessment
Truity's Big Five Personality Test is based on the Five Factor Model of personality, a widely respected psychological theory that classifies human personality traits into five broad dimensions: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism (OCEAN).
The comprehensive Big Five report reveals:
- Your core personality pattern based on where you fall across the five factors
- Your interpersonal pattern
- Your social pattern
- Your communication style
- Your emotional pattern
- Your productivity pattern
- Your rewards pattern
- Your esteem pattern
- Your inner life
- Your social life
- Your work life
The Big Five test is not solely a career test, although the report does uncover information that can be applied at work and when choosing a career. Rather, it’s a holistic personality assessment that helps you understand yourself deeper at home, at work and in relationships.
Why we like it:
- Best career test for leadership or greater self-awareness at all career levels
- Easy-to-read, in-depth report with personalized results (view a sample report)
- Most widely accepted personality test by the scientific community
- High credibility with an average customer star rating of 4.9 out of 5
- Only takes 10-15 minutes to complete
DISC Personality Assessment
The DISC assessment, developed almost a century ago based on the theory of psychologist William Moulton Marston, remains relevant today thanks to its insightful results.
This career quiz reveals your primary workplace motivation and ideal work environment, helping to predict your potential happiness and performance in different career fields. The four DISC styles - Drive, Influence, Support and Clarity - identify your comfort zone in the professional world, guiding you towards fulfilling career choices.
Truity’s full DISC report reveals:
- Your core DISC personality type and subtype (your subtype is a mix of your top two DISC styles)
- Your workplace priorities
- Your talents and strengths
- Your communication style
- Your conflict style
- Your leadership style
- Your workplace wellbeing
- Tips on working with others
As with all Truity paid assessments, you can get a basic overview of your primary personality type for free, and the in-depth report is available for a fee.
Why we like it:
- Best test for improving workplace communication and mid-career changes or planning
- Easy-to-read, in-depth report with personalized results (view a sample report)
- High credibility with an average customer star rating of 4.9 out of 5
- Only takes 10-15 minutes to complete
Enneagram for the Workplace Test
The Enneagram is a system of personality typing that describes nine personality types defined by their unique motivations and fears. Unlike personality tests that describe traits and behaviors, like the TypeFinder or Big Five, the Enneagram focuses on what drives a person to behave the way that they do.
Historically, the Enneagram has been used for personal and spiritual growth, but in recent years it has become a powerful tool for teams and professional development. Understanding yourself through the lens of the Enneagram can help with conflict resolution, team dynamics, leadership and emotional intelligence. Truity’s Enneagram for the Workplace test reveals:
- Your Enneagram type in-depth (plus how you score among the other eight types)
- Your type at work (Preferred work environment, communication style and leadership style)
- Your type on teams
- Your Enneagram wings and arrows (these explain how your type develops over time and responds to stress)
- Growth tasks for your type
While not specifically a career planning assessment, the Enneagram for the Workplace can help with career development and professional growth, and can also be used with teams to enhance collaboration and communication.
Why we like it:
- Best motivation-based test for workplace development and teams
- Easy-to-read, in-depth report with personalized results
- High credibility with an average customer star rating of 4.9 out of 5
- Only takes 10-15 minutes to complete
Final Thoughts on Career Tests
High-quality career assessments help guide professionals at all levels and stages of their career along their professional journeys. By shedding light on hidden strengths, skills, motivations and blind spots, these assessments empower you to make informed choices about education, job changes, career trajectory and job hunting.
Each of the career quizzes on this list has something valuable to offer depending on what your unique needs may be. However, if you want to save time or aren’t sure where to start, we suggest Truity’s Career Personality Profiler as the best overall career test.
While no career quiz can choose the perfect career for you, it can equip you with the information you need to make the most informed decision for yourself. So, ditch the career confusion and embrace the clarity a high-quality assessment offers – it's an investment in your future that's sure to pay dividends.
Additional Career Quiz Resources
Looking for more career quiz information? Take a look at some of these articles: