“People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.”
– Thomas Merton
I wish I had a profiling tool such as the Strong Interest Inventory to provide me with some career guidance when I was younger. Here’s my story:
My Career Journey
I had an interest in programming since I was 14 (or perhaps even earlier). Back in those days, windows wasn’t even a thing yet. We had this wonderful thing called MS-DOS, and big flat 5-1/4 inch magnetic floppy disks that grew mold if you kept it for too long. Without a nice intuitive interface like windows, we had to learn how to key in commands in the prompts. This was challenging for my parents, and so I created a menu system for them using MS-DOS Batch programming.
Soon after, I bumped into a Bulletin Board System (BBS) Administrator who told me that batch programming really wasn’t programming at all, and took me under his wing to learn programming in the PASCAL Language. Soon I was learning about all sorts of programming languages and always thought that I would become a computer programmer when I grew up. (Ok, before that I wanted to be a doctor… but these things change right?)
I took up computer engineering when I was University, and because of the huge head start I had, I did much better than most people. But I also had a huge interest in people, in motivation, and in the development of our vast human potential.
After I graduated, I ended up joining the Government Service, to introduce training and development to organizations. After that, I joined the first-ever integrated resorts in Singapore, doing quality and process management. And my boss so potential in me for training, and roped me in to provide customer service training for the 6 million square-feet property. Now I’m thoroughly enjoying coaching and conducting workshops to help people. It seems I’m pulled in two different directions – Programming & People Development – at the same time.
During my Strong Interest Inventory certification, this finally became clearer to me. My general occupational theme code is Social-Investigative-Conventional (SIC). All 3 were diametrically opposed to each other, which explains my diverse interest, leading to an acceptance and understanding that I need to work on crafting the perfect career for myself.
About the Strong Interest Inventory (SII)
The Strong Interest Inventory® assessment is one of the world’s most widely respected and frequently used career planning tools. It has helped both academic and business organizations develop the brightest talent and has guided thousands of individuals – from high school and college students to mid-career workers seeking a change – in their search for a rich and fulfilling career.
With the interpretive report, you get a full 19-page personalized report that helps you to explore your career options.
While the report itself is brilliant, the true value lies in the ability of the facilitator to draw out your desires, interests, likes and dislikes. The report isn’t meant to be prescriptive (i.e. go take this job and you will be happy for the rest of your life), the facilitation session has a very introspective aspect that leads to self-discovery and heightened self-awareness.
Knowing oneself is a very critical part of career planning.
The Career Planning Cycle
I like this diagram by Curtin University for career planning:
The starting point, and perhaps most important point, is to “KNOW who you are”, that is, to have greater self-awareness.
The Strong Interest Inventory uses John L. Holland’s psychologically based codes, commonly known as the RIASEC model to broadly categorise job environments, personal interest and motivations. It explores a person’s General Occupation Themes, Basic Interest Scales, Occupational Scales, and Personal Styles Scales.
Rather than describe the report in detail, here is a sample report so you can see just how detailed and what is covered in the report – Sample Strong’s Interest Inventory Report.
Creating Greater Clarity with Clifton StrengthsFinder
Some people combine the Strong interest inventory with the MBTI to identify suitable careers. Instead, I prefer to add the Clifton StrengthsFinder to the mix.
StrengthsFinder is essentially a developmental tool, and is not meant to be predictive, or used for selection purposes. But StrengthsFinder gives you an in-depth awareness of yourself, that would help identify what roles or job cultures would be suitable for you.
According to Gallup’s research, people who use their strengths are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs. And if that is so, wouldn’t it be important to understand a person’s strengths and learn if the careers that they are looking for are able to provide them with the opportunity to do so?
People who use their strengths are six times as likely to be engaged in their jobs.
A Case Study – Combining Strong Interest Inventory with StrengthsFinder
I recently coached a friend using the Strong Interest Inventory and found that (amongst other things)
- His General Occupation Theme (GOT) is Investigative, Realistic, Conventional (IRC)
- His Basic Interest Scales show that he likes Mechanics and Construction and Science
- His Personal Style Scales reveals that he prefers to work alone, can learn via hands-on activities or classroom-based.
And throughout our conversation, I could hear him speak out of his Top 5 StrengthsFinder Talent Themes:
- Analytical
- Responsibility
- Focus
- Command
- Activator
Some other talent themes that seem to be pretty dominant for him based on our discussion are:
With his StrengthsFinder report, I helped him to identify and clarify his motivations, and also what he needs to function at his peak. Armed with this knowledge and heightened self-awareness, he could handle interview questions more confidently and he could also ask critical questions to ensure that the job he is applying for will be a good fit for him.
Update [21 Feb 2017]
This gentleman has since our conversation partnered with a friend to start their own business selling biking merchandise with a friend, pursue forex trading using automated trading strategies, and is on route to becoming a commercial pilot (his dream job).
If you are in the process of choosing a career or are thinking of transiting to a new one, the career clarity package may be just the thing you need.
