The right tool for the right job

You can cut to the career chase, reports JULIE MIDDLETON.

Want to pinpoint what job would best suit you?

The New Zealand Herald is now offering the handy internet gadget Selector CareerStep through its website to help you work out what your skills, interests and workplace preferences are, and where they can take you.

And from my experience, it's a spot-on tool, offering an organised way of thinking about the things that motivate you on the job, plus job-search strategies.

"It's a way of matching demeanour and environment," says Jon Vincent, acting chief executive officer of Selector Group.

CareerStep is relevant to everyone who works, says marketing coordinator Diane Crawford. But it's especially helpful for people "having a career crisis, school leavers thinking about what university courses to take, women returning to the work force - even third formers thinking about whether they are going to do the science/maths route or the English/arts route."

CareerStep costs $49.95 - making it one of the cheaper forms of career development available. The 200 choose-your-choice questions take about 20 minutes to do, depending on how much you dither at the computer keyboard.

You just need some honest self-reflection, a good mouse finger and at least 17 pieces of paper in your computer printer.

Based on American psychologist Dr John Holland's pioneering 1950s work - which is the basis of most career inventories used today - it assumes that most people can be loosely categorised around six "types": realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional.

For example, a public relations officer is likely to a blend of artistic, enterprising and social; a survey technician realistic, conventional and investigative.

The test asks you to assess, on a least-to-most scale, ability in areas such as maths and general knowledge; interest in various activities ranging from studying rock formations to driving trucks and doing aerial acrobatics; how much time you spend doing activities ranging from cultivating plants to programming computers; and 60 items related to on-the-job requirements, such as working with machinery or close supervision.

It's very clean and clear to navigate.

And what of me? I'm evidently in the right job, and here's the evidence.

The report nutted out that self-expression is an important motivator, and that I need work to exercise the grey stuff and give chances to research and investigate.

Open interaction and cooperation with others is important for job satisfaction, fluid and changeable environments are not a problem, and performance-related pay appeals.

It points out that I quite like the thought of pure business - dealing, selling and managing - but don't think my skills are yet quite up to scratch.

It accurately picks me as a creature of couch-related comforts - physical work involving fixing things, operating machinery or working outdoors doesn't rate.

In a masterful piece of understatement, it suggests that "it would be an advantage if someone else were available to fix equipment or fittings when they malfunction."

The inventory also outlines what would suit me best in terms of company size, type, structure, and work complexity and pressure level, and attitude to work in general.

And these are the jobs I could do well, it says: a wide range from journalism (phew) to art directing, copywriting, ad managing, interpreting, art dealing, and English teaching.

And there are plenty of suggestions I am apparently well-suited to that would never have been considered otherwise: comedian, stage director, and cryptanalyst. I had to look that one up; it's someone who decodes communications in the murky world of government spooks.

And while on the subject of spies, apparently I could even be one - intelligence specialist and intelligence research analyst is also on my list.

The list also outlines the rough level of education required for each position. The more off-the-wall? Artists' model, pastry chef, stained glass artist, or floral designer.

The verdict? It's helpful and reassuring to have something that cuts cleanly through a bewildering array of choices and delivers a neat and relevant set of ideas.

It can save a lot of angst, scurrying up dead ends - and disastrous forays into the wrong jobs.

nzherald.co.nz/careerstep