Are personality tests a helpful tool for counsellors?

As counsellors, one of our responsibilities is to get to know our students. Only then can we make fitting recommendations for their next stage in life.

Other than the essential one-to-one conversations, an efficient, validated and logical method of getting to understand our students’ individuality is through assessment.

To help make the best-informed suggestions, we take into account the individual’s current personality, career styles, strengths and values. Existing assessments cover these domains, and I will review a number under each category.

A few remarks about these assessments:

• Do test them out yourself first and think about how to introduce them to students, given your curriculum, time limitations and preferences as a college counsellor.
• Do reflect on how to use the outcomes in a thoughtful and intentional way, and try to follow up with one-to-one debriefing conversations.
• The college-counselling platform you use (such as Unifrog or Cialfo) will probably come equipped with built-in tests, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel. My recommendations can serve those who do not have access to such platforms.
• It is recommended to administer these tests in Year 10, an ideal time at which to build self-awareness and to inform profile-building decisions (which major and which activities to choose) in the final two years of high school.

Personality

Your personality is made up of the enduring characteristics and behaviours that make up your adjustment to life. What is unique about your students? These tests can help you understand them in an expedited way.

1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Beloved by laypeople and detested by psychologists, the MBTI gives a great starting insight into how individuals might be different from one another. It’s popular in workplaces and on college counselling platforms – but be cautious of the binary categories that it puts people into.

2. Big 5 

Your advanced psychology students might naturally gravitate towards this one, because it’s the most scientifically validated and widely taught. However, it might not necessarily yield exciting results, as the the MBTI does. Still, it might help you to understand why certain students avoid conflicts with their parents at all costs (scoring high in “agreeableness”) while others struggle to meet impending deadlines (scoring low in “conscientiousness”).

3. Enneagram

Beloved of fourth-century Christian mystics and Hollywood screenwriters, Enneagram dives deep into individuals’ basic fears and desires. Most likely too deep for college counselling conversations, it’s one of the oldest personality tests available. It’s also much more accurate than astrology.

4. Ultimate

Clearerthinking releases a host of research-based tests, and the “ultimate” personality test is one of its most recent ones, combining Myers-Briggs, Big 5 and Enneagram into one easy test with intuitive profiles and a somewhat overwhelming wealth of data.

Career

There are a number of career tests out there. Some can output very specific jobs (such as “radiologist” or “English teacher”), but at this stage pigeonholing prescriptions are of limited use. So I’m only including here those tests that offer more general guiding directions.

1. Holland Code

The Holland Code career test is a well-regarded assessment in the career counselling field. It spells out broad occupational themes that match interests, such as “realistic/building”, “investigative/thinking” and “social/helping”.

2. Princeton Review

Princeton Review released a quick and easy career quiz that results in an “interest” and a “style” in four different categories – expediting, communicating, planning, administering – and links to a huge list of possible careers. A quick one to start with if the Holland Code seems daunting.

3. Further Reading 

This excellent article dives further into free career aptitude tests you can use.

Strengths

The following tests help identify soft skills that students already excel at, which can be helpful when reflecting on essays and choosing classes and extracurriculars. If you are able to identify a student’s talent through this test, encourage them to develop it into a “spike”, as described in this article.

1. CliftonStrengths

This test is popular, well-validated and useful – but also pricey. Students will probably encounter it at the well-funded career centres of their universities – so, at the high-school stage, free tools will suffice. But if you’d like to consider and read up on it, you can do so here.

2. High5

High5 is a free and friendly sibling of CliftonStrengths. There is a paid version of the report, but the results of the free version (a list and a description of your top-five strengths) is intuitive and affirming for the students. Use it to reflect on past achievements (for example: “What strengths did you use for this leadership role?”) and to plan future activities and goals (“Which activities are in line with your strengths?”). 

3. Multiple Intelligences

The research on intelligence has come a long way, and Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences allows individuals to realise that, even if they’re not “book smart”, they can still be smart. Useful if you’d like to demonstrate that it’s possible to be intelligent musically, kinaesthetically, and even intrapersonally and existentially.

The assessment will give out one’s aptitude, measured by percentages on all nine intelligences. If you’re confused by the number, the original theory contained eight, but this one is based on the updated theory with nine types.

Values

Finally, there are abstract values (such as hope, humour, forgiveness and curiosity) that ground and guide us. If you’d like to try identifying these for your students, turn to the following two tests. These can be especially useful for tricky supplementary essays that ask 17-year-olds to define a fully formed life philosophy straddled by abstract values.

1. VIA CharacterStrengths

The platform lists this test as “character strengths”, but the outcomes are more synonymous with “values” – as the acronym “VIA” (Values In Action) indicates. It will go into the detail of your top values and then list all 44 values in order of their salience and importance to you. 

2. CollegeEssayGuy

Not really a test, but an activity I really like that helps students to actively reflect on and identify their guiding values. CollegeEssayGuy is a treasure trove of other resources for essay writing, as well.

And, of course, as with many college and career counselling resources, you can use these tools to gain a deeper understanding of yourself as a counsellor, too.