Title: Introduction to Profiling for Success
Duration: 3:41
I'm Tanisha, one of the student team members for the Careers Network and I'm here today to tell you about our new online psychometric testing tool, 'Profiling for Success'.
This service consists of useful questionnaires designed to help you find out more about yourself, develop your career plans and practice the types of assessments you might face when applying for graduate jobs.
You can access the platform by going to the Careers Network website and go into the 'apply for opportunities' section. Once you're there, go to the psychometric testing support page where you'll find the link to Profiling for Success.
The first step is to register for a Profiling for Success account. In order to access all the features available, please sign up with your Birmingham email address in the following format: enter your username followed by @bham.ac.uk. Please note that signing up using the @student.bham.ac.uk domain instead, may result in some features not displaying correctly for you.
Once you're signed in, you'll be presented with three navigation options. In this video we'll guide you through how to use the 'take tests' option, as this provides the quickest and easiest way to get started.
There are two main types of tests available: personality questionnaires and aptitude tests. Personality questionnaires can be used to gain further insight into your preferences and personality type, in order to help you clarify your goals and plan your career. These are useful anytime, but can be especially helpful if you're struggling to decide what kind of career path you're interested in pursuing.
You can find the personality questionnaires under the 'Energy' and 'Personality' sections. Tests in this section include: the Values Based Indicator of Motivation questionnaire, which can help you learn more about things that are important to you, and a Type Dynamics Indicator, which helps you to understand more about your behavioural preferences.
Aptitude tests are a common component of the recruitment process for graduate roles. Recruiters use these tests to assess your capabilities in specific areas, such as numerical, verbal and logical reasoning, and use the results to screen out candidates who don't meet their minimum requirements. Practising these types of tests will give you a better chance of demonstrating your true potential in a real life assessment scenario.
You can find aptitude tests under the ‘thinking’ section. We recommend starting with the tests in 'Tutorial Corner', as these tests are intended as an introduction to these kinds of assessments, and the report you will receive at the end will show you how well you did on each individual question.
Once you've taken the tests in Tutorial Corner, head over to 'Real Practice Corner' to experience taking those same kinds of tests in an environment which more closely simulates a real-world assessment scenario. At the end of these tests, you won't be able to find out how well you did on each individual question, but you will find out how accurate your answers were and how fast you completed, compared to the average user.
Once you've completed a test, you’ll receive personalised feedback about your results via email. You can also revisit feedback from previous tests you've taken by clicking the user account drop down menu at the top of the page and selecting previous results.
So, if you're looking to hone those crucial skills necessary for when applying to graduate jobs or need help deciding which career pathway is right for you, then Profiling for Success might just be the tool for you. And if you need help interpreting some feedback or if you'd like some further guidance then please do contact us by email or book an appointment with a career advisor.