If you would like personalized assistance, please contact the CDC for an individual appointment, or stop by during drop-in hours Monday through Friday between 2 P.M. and 4 P.M.

Career Assessments

Career assessments may be used to help you find out more about yourself. Assessments used at the CDC include:

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• Strong Interest Inventory

These assessments are paper-based and may need to be sent out to be scored. An Individual Career Counseling Appointment must be scheduled to review assessment results. Assessments are free for current students and $10 each for alumni.

See also: Online Career Tests

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a self report questionnaire designed to make psychological types (normal personality differences) understandable and useful in our everyday life. Every one of us has a set of preferences by which we live. There is no right or wrong to these preferences. They simply produce different kinds of people who are interested in different things, are drawn to different fields, and sometimes find it hard to understand each other.

The MBTI is a tool that can be utilized to identify and understand your own preferences and discover how they apply to a career decision. The MBTI will also help you to identify your strengths and unique gifts. You can use the information to better understand yourself, your motivations, your strengths, and potential areas of growth. It will also help you to better understand and appreciate those who differ from you.

The MBTI is primarily concerned with the valuable differences in people that result from where they like to focus their attention, the way they prefer to take in information, the way they make decisions, and the kind of work/lifestyle they adopt.

Strong Interest Inventory (SII)

The Strong Interest Inventory (SII) is based on the idea that individuals are more satisfied and productive when they work in jobs or at tasks that they find interesting and when they work with people whose interests are similar to their own. The SII takes about 25 minutes to complete and contains 317 items that measure your interests in a wide range of occupations, occupational activities, hobbies, leisure activities and types of people. Your interests are compared to thousands of individuals who report being happy and successful in their jobs.

Online Career Tests

These are some webpages that offer free career and assessment tests:

The Career Key
A free public service to help people make sound career decisions. Learn about the Career Key measure and Holland's types. Learn about jobs that fit your Holland type and learn to make high quality decisions.

John Holland's SDS (Self-Directed Search)
John Holland's RIASEC system, and its three-letter 'Holland Code,' is determined by taking John Holland's Self Directed Search instrument. (There is an online version of the SDS at, which you can take, resulting in a personalized report online, that you can print out (the cost for all is $8.95).

PrincetonReview.com Career Quiz
Richard Bolles, author of What Color is Your Parachute?, recommends this highly! And so does Electra. A 24 item quiz, based on the Birkman Method, will lead you to a list of possible careers and information about them. While you must register with name and email, the test is free. Try it!

The Keirsey Temperament Sorter
Introvert? Extrovert? The Keirsey Inventory is often used by career counselors to find out how your job might be pinching your personality and to suggest new avenues. Check out the list of books to learn more about how this test can help select a career or help you work with others. [This site also provides the test in Spanish, Portuguese, German and Norwegian.]

QueenDom.com: The Best Tests For Career Hunters
Over two dozen different career-related quizzes have been gathered here. They address everything from sales jobs to owning your own business.

Psych Tests
Diverse career related tests are available on this site.

*The Macalester College CDC is not responsible for material on pages which are not part of the CDC website.

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