All successful people have one thing in common: they are interested and fully involved in what they do. Interest makes a person go that ‘extra mile’ and is the key to work satisfaction. ‘Interest’ is seldom given priority in career decision-making. Career planning and job choice are not taken seriously in early life particularly, when parental influence, peer pressure, unsolicited advice and popular trends have great influence on decision-making. Haphazard career decisions create problems at intra-personal, inter-personal and organisational levels. Wrong career decisions make life miserable for an individual and result in under-utilisation of human resource in organisations. Career decisions must therefore be made with great care.

Students have different strengths & preferences in the way they take in and process information – which is to say they have different learning styles. Some prefer to work with concrete information (facts, experimental data) while others are more comfortable with abstractions (theories, symbolic information, mathematical models) some are partial to visual presentation of information – pictures, diagrams, flowcharts, schematics etc., and others get more from verbal explanations. Some like to learn by trying things out, watching and analysing what happens, and others would rather reflect on things they plan to do and understand as much as they can about them before actually attempting it.

In this scenario and fast changing world where the students are more affected with parental influence or popular trends, there is a need to assess self of strengths (as a person) and areas of improvement/concern. This plays a major role as each of the professional choice needs certain tasks to be achieved and demands certain traits from those who are involved in that profession. A student can be given a proper career decision making direction only if his/her personality, abilities, interest and attitudes are assessed, understood, interpreted and counselled appropriately.

Relevance of Personality to Professional Choice:

It is a known fact that each profession demands certain personality characters apart from the subject knowledge. An individual who chooses a profession for which he doesn’t have requisite personality traits fails in that profession. To excel in a profession, it is very important to understand the personality traits of the self and the requisite expectation of the job and match between the self and the job. This mapping will help the candidate to use his traits in a successful manner in the profession that he chooses. A simple example can be a Marketing Job, irrespective of the product to be sold, marketing executive needs to have certain characteristics such as Extrovert, Networking, good Mathematical, spatial ability and understand the pattern of the market. If an introvert candidate makes an attempt to be in the marketing department, it is obvious that he would get frustrated about his failure in closing the deals or meeting the target.

Psychological research has provided a valid base that each profession needs certain personalitycharacteristics to be able to excel in that profession.

Relevance to Ability testing to Career Guidance:

Each of the ability (numerical, spatial, logical and pattern recognition) surely has direct or indirect relevance to the performance at work place. Better understanding of the abilities will not only help in choosing a right course and thereby a proper career but also it would help in achieving success in the job with ease.

A simple example can be a civil engineer is required to have good spatial ability so that he can visualise the model that he has built. A researcher may require high amount of logical ability and a marketing manager would require understanding the pattern.

Relevance of Interest Assessment to Career Guidance:

The interest assessment can be done by capturing the ‘perception of interest’ after classifying into eight various dimensions. They are:

1. Influential – able to have a powerful effect on people and what they do. Highly influential people are the mostly successful in administrative and enterprising occupations. They are very confident in taking responsibility.

2. Venturous – willing to undertake or seeking out new and daring activity. Highly venturous people are mostly successful in sports and defence. They are mostly impulsive and quick to make friends. People high on venturous are usually tough-minded and self-reliant.

3. Artistic - relating characteristics of art or artists with satisfying aesthetic standards and sensibilities. Highly artistic people are usually successful in creative and performing arts occupations.

4. Scientific – relating to adapting to a systematic procedure in performing an activity. People with highly scientific perceptions are successful in medical and technical occupations. They exhibit the tendency of making more remarks especially in problem-raising and solution-offering situations.

5. Analytical – capable of reflecting the capability for correct and valid reasoning. People with high analytical perceptions are usually successful in expressive and computational occupations. They are capable of organising information and tasks according to prescribed plan and execute them to achieve success.

6. Social – inclined to seek out or enjoy the company of others. People with high perception on the dimension of Social are usually successful in humanitarian and educational occupations.

7. Nature – the world of living things and outdoor. People with more perception on the dimension of nature are generally anxious, imaginative and act on sensitive intuitions.

8. Clerical – appropriate for engaging in clerical operations. Usually they are very responsible, emotionally disciplined and are dominated by sense of duty. They are highly concerned about moral values and standards.