LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 810 million users worldwide. With its massive reach, LinkedIn has become an invaluable tool for networking, recruiting, job searching, and career development. One of the many useful features offered by LinkedIn is their career testing and assessment tools. These tests can provide insights into a person’s skills, interests, values, and personality traits to help guide them in choosing a fulfilling career path. In this article, we will explore the career tests available on LinkedIn and how they can benefit job seekers or career changers.
What Types of Career Tests Does LinkedIn Offer?
LinkedIn offers several different types of career tests and self-assessments:
LinkedIn Career Quiz
The LinkedIn Career Quiz is a quick and easy way to get started exploring potential career options that match your interests. It poses questions about your skills, interests, and values. Based on your responses, it generates a list of recommended careers and job titles that may be a good fit.
LinkedIn Skills Assessments
LinkedIn Skills Assessments allow you to validate your knowledge and proficiency in various professional skills. You can take short multiple-choice tests to demonstrate your abilities in areas like computer programming, data science, accounting, marketing, and more. Showcasing these skills on your profile can enhance your credibility and employability.
LinkedIn Interview Prep
LinkedIn Interview Prep helps you get ready for your next job interview. It generates personalized questions tailored to your experience level in your target field. Practicing responses to likely interview questions can help boost your confidence.
LinkedIn Salary Insights
The LinkedIn Salary comparison tool lets you research and compare average salaries for different occupations. Understanding salary ranges can assist with comparisons, negotiations, career planning, and deciding between job offers.
Personality Assessment LinkedIn Learning Paths
If you upgrade to a LinkedIn Premium account, you gain access to more in-depth career testing resources. The Personality Assessment suggests LinkedIn Learning Paths based on your unique personality traits and ways you like to learn. This can point you towards educational resources suited to your needs.
What Are the Benefits of Taking LinkedIn’s Career Tests?
There are many potential advantages to checking out LinkedIn’s career testing resources:
Gain Self-Awareness
The assessments can enhance your self-awareness regarding your natural strengths, interests, talents, values, and characteristics. Increased self-understanding allows you to make more informed career choices.
Explore Options
The tests expose you to various potential career paths you may not have previously considered but could be a great fit based on your attributes. This expands your perspectives on possibilities.
Confirm or Refine Direction
For those who have a career direction in mind, the tests can help confirm whether your chosen path plays to your strengths. Or, they may reveal a better aligned option to refine your plans.
Identify Knowledge Gaps
The skills assessments clearly identify areas of strength versus topics to brush up on. This helps focus your training and preparation.
Get Interview Ready
Practicing responses to likely interview questions reduces stress and makes you appear polished, thoughtful, and confident.
Inform Decisions
The salary data provides benchmarks to determine whether job offers are competitive and financially viable.
Access Learning Resources
The suggested Learning Paths provide helpful development opportunities to build skills in areas of need.
Who Can Benefit from Taking LinkedIn’s Career Tests?
LinkedIn’s career tests offer value for:
Job Seekers
Individuals looking for a new job can explore new roles suited to their attributes and showcase relevant skills to stand out.
Career Changers
For those looking to pivot into a new field, the assessments can pinpoint fitting careers to transition into.
Graduating Students
New grads entering the workforce can learn about potential careers and prepare for the job hunt process.
Workers Seeking Direction
Employees feeling stuck or unsatisfied may uncover exciting new career avenues better aligned with their passions.
Promotion Seekers
Those hoping for internal promotions can target skills to develop and salary data to negotiate pay increases.
Entrepreneurs
Aspiring business owners can identify strengths to capitalize on and learning needs to bolster their capabilities.
How Accurate Are LinkedIn’s Career Test Results?
As with any career test, the quality and accuracy of LinkedIn’s assessments largely depends on how honest test takers are in responding to the questions. If you answer thoughtfully and truthfully, the results can provide solid guidance. But no career test can predict your future with absolute certainty.
The best approach is to consider any results as suggestions to explore further rather than definitive answers. Verify any recommended careers mesh well with your real-life experiences and secret aspirations. Use the tests as a discovery starting point along your journey rather than a direct destination.
Some critics argue LinkedIn’s standard career quiz may be too simplistic to capture nuanced self-knowledge. The premium Personality Assessment provides more sophisticated insights based on well-researched personality models. Overall, most users find value in the breadth of LinkedIn’s offerings.
How Do LinkedIn’s Career Tests Work?
LinkedIn uses several techniques to power its career tests:
Assessment Questions
The career and skill tests pose a series of multiple choice questions about your interests, values, abilities, education, and experience. Your responses provide data points.
Algorithms
Complex algorithms analyze your answers to decipher patterns and themes that suggest careers worth exploring. Additional weighting may be applied to factors most predictive of job success.
Machine Learning
Some assessments apply machine learning, allowing the algorithm to improve its career recommendations over time based on new data.
Data Science
LinkedIn’s data scientists have performed extensive research on traits tied to career satisfaction. These evidence-based insights enhance the platform’s guidance.
Psychometrics
The premium Personality Assessment incorporates psychometric techniques measuring personal characteristics. This adds psychological rigor to the career matching process.
What Kinds of Questions Are Asked in LinkedIn’s Career Tests?
LinkedIn’s career tests feature appropriately customized questions for each assessment, but some common example questions include:
LinkedIn Career Quiz Sample Questions:
– Would you prefer a job working primarily with data or people?
– Which matters more: helping society or earning a high salary?
– Are you more analytical or empathetic?
– Is creativity or stability more important to you in a job?
– Would you rather teach others or perform hands-on tasks?
LinkedIn Skills Assessment Sample Questions:
– What data structure is used for looking up key-value pairs in nearly constant time? (A) Stack (B) Queue (C) Hash table (D) Tree
– What is the runtime complexity of searching for an element in a binary search tree? (A) O(1) (B) O(log N) (C) O(N) (D) O(N^2)
LinkedIn Salary Sample Questions:
– What is your job title?
– How many years of experience do you have in this field?
– What geographical area do you work in?
– What industry do you work in?
How Long Does It Take to Complete LinkedIn’s Career Tests?
Most of LinkedIn’s career assessments are designed to be completed quickly in under 15 minutes. Here are estimated durations:
LinkedIn Career Quiz
– 10-15 minutes
LinkedIn Skills Assessments
– 10-20 minutes
LinkedIn Interview Prep
– 15-30 minutes
LinkedIn Salary
– 5-10 minutes
LinkedIn Personality Assessment
– 15-20 minutes
The brevity makes the tests convenient to fit into a lunch break or commute. The quick questions supply enough data to provide useful guidance without getting burdensome.
Are LinkedIn’s Career Tests Free or Paid?
LinkedIn offers some career tests for free and others require upgraded memberships:
Free Assessments:
– LinkedIn Career Quiz
– Interview Prep Tool
– Skills Assessments
– Salary Insights
Premium Paid Assessments:
– Personality Assessment
– Additional role-specific Interview Prep packs
– Certification Practice Exams
– Learning Path recommendations
LinkedIn provides their most powerful career testing tools under their Premium subscriptions, which start around $30 per month. But you can still gain helpful perspective from their free assessments.
How Do I Access LinkedIn’s Career Tests?
Here is a step-by-step guide to taking LinkedIn’s career tests:
LinkedIn Career Quiz
1. Log into your LinkedIn account on desktop or mobile.
2. Click “Jobs” and select “Career Quiz”.
3. Answer the multiple choice questions.
4. View your quiz results.
LinkedIn Skills Assessments
1. Go to the Skills section of your profile.
2. Click “Take skill quiz” for your desired skill.
3. Answer the multiple choice questions.
4. See your proficiency level result.
LinkedIn Interview Prep
1. Click “Jobs” then select “Interview Prep”.
2. Pick your experience level and field.
3. Practice responding to common interview questions.
LinkedIn Salary
1. Go to the Salary section of your LinkedIn profile.
2. Enter your job title, experience, location, etc.
3. View customized salary data.
LinkedIn Personality Assessment
1. Upgrade to a Premium account.
2. Go to the personality assessment under LinkedIn Learning.
3. Complete the assessment questionnaire.
4. Get recommended Learning Paths based on your traits.
Pros and Cons of LinkedIn’s Career Tests
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| – Easy access through existing LinkedIn profiles | – Some criticisms of limited depth or accuracy |
| – Quick, brief format convenient to fit into busy schedules | – Premium version required for more advanced insights |
| – Assessments frequently updated and improved | – Results should be considered as helpful suggestions, not definitive career answers |
| – Tests utilize latest data science and machine learning | – Personality test has minimal transparency into methodology |
| – Exposure to careers may not have previously considered | – Skills tests focus on technical abilities, excluding soft skills |
| – Salary tool offers helpful benchmarking data | – Interview prep lacks complete training on body language, rapport, etc. |
| – Resources to build skills where gaps identified | – Some limitations in practice exam/interview question banks |
Conclusion
In summary, LinkedIn offers readily accessible career tests that can provide useful starting points and data to aid the complex career exploration process. The convenience, breadth of assessments, integration with LinkedIn profiles, and use of advanced analytics offer notable advantages. While limitations exist, there are still valuable takeaways at no cost. Candidates would benefit from testing LinkedIn’s free career guidance and supplementing with additional career advising resources where needed.
