By Debola Oni

Ladi studied IT in school and enjoyed his work in a Federal Government department. He spent the day attending to people who had enquiries on data, and he was fulfilled. Then, his department folded up and Ladi had to join the IT department in a bank. He was left to his resources in the computer room with only computers for company. He soon became bored and restless. Even though he tried his best and worked the hours, his appraisals were always very poor, and this in turn made him depressed. He was using the same qualifications he used in the Federal Government department, so he wondered why he was not doing well.

A Career Direct® session revealed, amongst other things, that Ladi’s personality was highly extroverted, and therefore, he had a need to constantly engage with other people. He was quite unstructured, and the job in the bank was highly structured with routines. He had high computational skills - no doubt about that, but he was a people person. It was the lack of interpersonal activity that was draining his energy, because extroverts draw energy from other people.

A good psychometric test opens us up and reveals us to ourselves. We are all wired differently. We have different “DNA”s in terms of our personality, interests, values and skills. A properly administered psychometric test will tell you to the point of percentages, how you measure up on given scales. It’s all about self-knowledge, and knowledge is power. Yes, you may want to work in that organization, but are you suited to work in Human Resources, Administration, Management, Finance or Marketing. Being properly located will make or mar you. I, for one would never work in marketing, because I couldn’t sell ice to someone in the Sahara Desert or hot coffee to an Eskimo in the North Pole. I learnt through bitter experience, what could have been deduced through a psychometric test such as Career Direct®.

Why learn through trial and error, or rejection and failure, instead of paying for a psychometric test? “I wish we had access to these things when we were growing up, life would have been simpler for us.” A friend of mine exclaimed, after I carried out a psychometric test for her son, who was considering medicine and chemical engineering. The decision had to be made, so the test was taken.

Plato’s famous injunction, “Know thyself,” which has been handed down and interpreted severally through the ages, cannot be more apt today in making career choices. An understanding of your strengths and weaknesses (which by the way I prefer to call non- strengths), cannot be over- emphasized. I call it self-knowledge. In making our career choices, it is imperative that we play to our strengths rather than our non – strengths.

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