Empowering career search and enrichment

Written by Catherine Rains

As I mentioned last week, we are all picking up Sensing information first (facts, reality, specifics), but we all don’t do the same thing with this information. With people who prefer Intuition, they momentarily look at the data, and then with lightning speed jump to what those facts mean to them. They are looking for the implications, interpretations, and possibilities behind the data. In fact, they often care more about what the facts mean, rather than about the facts themselves, which means they could lose the original intent of the facts in the process of interpreting them!

So how can you guess whether someone prefers Intuition? They ….

• Usually love to brainstorm about the possibilities of a subject
• Could ask long term kind of questions like what is the future of a certain career field
• Are more likely to ask questions that start with “what if”, “suppose” and “why”
• Often jump around in the conversation, following whatever tangent is most interesting in the moment
• Might enjoy telling stories with metaphors
• Sometimes are attracted to careers that involve creativity and little routine
• Could prefer fiction type novels
• Occasionally dress more artistically or expressively, with perhaps a few tattoos or body piercings thrown in if they are younger
• Often love to take MBTI® and/or the Strong assessment to generate new career possibilities

How many more behavioral cues can you come up with for Intuition?

Written by Jim Larkin

In continuation of my 2-part post, I discuss more instructions to give students when taking assessments - specifically for the Strong Interest Inventory® assessment assessment. For the Strong, the confusion is often around the student thinking that they are indicating whether they think they could actually do the job well or be successful in a class about a particular subject. The Strong does not measure skills and abilities, only INTERESTS. You might tell them to imagine getting on a cross-country flight. When the person sits down next to them and they go through the typical introductions and find out that the person is a Broadcast Journalist, Pharmacist, or a Recreational Therapist, does that pique their interest to make them ask some questions (showing some interest or that they LIKE that occupation) or do they want to just say, “Oh, that’s interesting” and turn to pick up the airline magazine and do the crossword puzzle (showing indifference) or make them think inside, “Ugh, who would be interested in that?” (indicating they DISLIKE that occupation). Remember to emphasize that their interests are being compared with the interests of 1,000s of people who have completed the Strong, who are successful in their jobs, have been in their careers for at least 3 years AND are satisfied in their jobs. The theory states that people with common interests will have a high likelihood of achieving high job satisfaction and success in the same jobs.


I hope you found this helpful. If you have any tips or insights of your own to share, please post as a comment!

Written by Jim Larkin

The best results in any personality or interest inventory will be returned when the “client” has clear instructions on how to approach the questions. This is equally true for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® assessment as it is for the Strong Interest Inventory® assessment. When giving instructions to your students who are sitting down to take either or both assessments it is critical that they know how to approach the questions. With the MBTI assessment, you want to emphasize “preferences”. With the Strong you are, of course, after the students’ interests.


When instructing your students who are taking the MBTI® assessment, emphasize that they are to indicate their PREFERRED behavior when answering the questions. They may find that they typically act one way more often, but given the choice, they may actually PREFER to act more in line with the other answer. Their typical behavior may reflect what they have learned to be the “correct” behavior, but if they truly answer honestly, they may find that they are not acting in a manner that would be more natural or comfortable for them. Another way to approach this is to answer as if no one else is going to see your actions and give you their approval or judgment about that behavior; no friends, parents or teachers are going to tell you whether you did the right thing, only yourself. There are no expectations or “shoulds” included in the answers. There is no “normally” I do this, because the possibility is that they may “normally” be acting outside of their preferred behavior because of an outside expectation.

Next week, I’ll share some insights for the Strong assessment.

Written by Jim Larkin

Have you ever heard a student say that when you are going over their Strong Interest Inventory® (Strong) results? I’ve heard that one before. The thing we need to do as Career Counselors is draw the students’ attention away from specifics, this or that occupation, and move them over to trends. Look at the top 10 occupations and draw out General Occupational Theme trends. The Strong assessment lists only 122 occupations per gender. In no way does it intend for the student to choose from only those occupations. The Holland Dictionary of Occupations contains thousands of occupations—all of them assigned with a General Occupational Theme code. Our goal is to help the students identify a few Themes that they can then focus their search on.

The Strong Interest Inventory® Manual: Revised Edition offers another approach:

“…scores indicating similar interest in [for instance] “Production Worker” suggest an interest in the production and processing of tangible goods that might be linked to other occupational areas such as engineering, supply chain management, or construction… no interest inventory can provide scales that will measure the respondent’s interests in every occupation or academic major. Thus, generalizing the OSs to additional occupations and majors of the same type can greatly expand the usefulness of the instrument.” (Pg. 171)

Another approach takes advantage of programs such as O*NET™. On this site you will find listings for thousands of occupations that provide job descriptions, typical work tasks, work environment, expected pay scales and even projected job availability. By using the job descriptions, you can pull out specific tasks that appeal to the student and begin to see another trend. So, instead of identifying other occupational areas, like the manual suggests, you can find trends within those appealing tasks. By putting these tasks together on a list you can then start to create job descriptions and look for jobs that most closely reflect their dream job. You will also notice that O*NET assigns GOT codes to the occupations. One caveat here, the codes associated with jobs on O*NET relate to the tasks, not interests. So, GOT codes on the Strong assessment will not necessarily match the codes on the O*NET. Just something to keep in mind.

So, next time you hear “I don’t want to do any of those jobs!” you can start this simple process that may use “those” jobs to help you find the right one. Good luck!

Written by Catherine Rains

During the past 14 years, I have traveled the U.S. teaching MBTI® and Strong Interest Inventory® assessment workshops to college career counselors. What do you think is the number one question counselors have asked me about the MBTI assessment?

Probably the same question you get as well. It goes something like this: “I can’t decide whether I am an E or an I (or an S or an N, etc) because I do both! How can I be just one of these?" Or how about, "Do I really have to be one or the other?” I love this one, don’t you?

For the next month, we’re going to look at this question in detail. Let’s begin with what an unclear result looks like on the MBTI report. Also known as a slight result, it is a score of 5 or less in either direction for a particular scale such as Extraversion/Introversion. This basically means that your student chose an almost equal number of answers on both sides of a certain scale, resulting in a report that says they are an E or an I. But because the score is so low, the student isn’t quite sure the result reflects who they really are, or what it really means to have a score so close to the middle. Some questions to ask are:

• Do they do both equally well? 
• Could they really be both? Do they need to choose at all?
• Are they less Extraverted than their friend who got a score of 30?
• If they don’t know their type, how can they choose a career that fits their type?

Starting next week, we’re going to look at the common misconceptions about slight scores, followed by a discussion on strategies to help students discover their true or best fit type. Until next week…

Our fourth and last article in CPP’s series of assessment case study discussions by Judith Grutter, focusing on strategies for assessment interpretation using the Strong and MBTI® Career Report, is about Danny. Danny is one of the 40+ percent of college and university freshmen who are likely to drop out before graduating. Ms. Grutter explores why this is the case and how it might be related to MBTI^® type.

School was never easy for Danny. He didn’t think much about college. His parents didn’t go beyond high school and never really talked much about “career” or work that might require higher education. In fact his father dropped out of school in tenth grade. He has always provided well for his family, and doesn’t really see why Danny needs college. He says that Danny is “a strong boy and good with his hands. He can always earn a living.” Read the complete case study and download supporting materials.


Judith Grutter, M.S., NCC, MCC, is a trainer and career development program consultant with over 30 years' experience. Ms. Grutter is Principal of GS Consultants and conducts a yearly workshop on "Type and Relationships". This year’s workshop will be held on April 11-12, 2011 at Lake Tahoe, CA. To learn more, read about it in our previous blog. Visit http://www.gsconsultants.net/ for more information on other workshops as well as MBTI® and Strong Interest Inventory® certification programs.

What do you do when you encounter inconsistent Strong assessment results during an interpretation? This case study (part 3 of 4 in our series of case studies focused on strategies for assessment interpretation using the Strong and MBTI® Combined Career Report written by Judith Grutter) focuses on Rosie R., an adult re-entry university student who is considering a career change.

For the past six years, Rosie has been working in Human Resources for a large company that manufactures agricultural equipment. She is currently realizing that her interests have shifted in the following three areas:

• Continuing in human resources with an emphasis on training and development
• Pursuing a teaching credential or perhaps moving toward educational administration
• Attending law school with a focus on family law policy development

She decides to sign up for a career exploration class where she is prompted to take the Strong Interest Inventory® assessment. The instructor then finds some interesting results. Click here to read the complete case study.

Judith Grutter, M.S., NCC, MCC, is a trainer and career development program consultant with over 30 years' experience. Ms. Grutter is Principal of GS Consultants and conducts a yearly workshop on "Type and Relationships". This year’s workshop will be held on April 11-12, 2011 at Lake Tahoe, CA. To learn more, read about it in our previous blog. Visit www.gsconsultants.net for more information on other workshops as well as MBTI® and Strong Interest Inventory® certification programs.

A few years ago, Judith Grutter, CPP author and Principal of GS Consultants, wrote a series of four case studies for the CPP Career Insider newsletter. The case studies focused on strategies for assessment interpretation using the Strong and MBTI® Combined Career Report. Recently, a customer of ours contacted us about these case studies as he found them useful to share with his students. So we thought that it would be beneficial to share these again in hopes that you will find them useful as well!


The first case study focuses on Terri T., a second-year college student who is revisiting her initial decision to major in child development and pursue a career in elementary education for a nursing career instead. Here is the full case study on Terri T.

Judith Grutter, M.S., NCC, MCC, is a trainer and career development program consultant with over 30 years' experience. Ms. Grutter is Principal of GS Consultants and conducts a yearly workshop on "Type and Relationships". This year’s workshop will be held on April 11-12, 2011 at Lake Tahoe, CA. To learn more, read about it in our previous blog. Visit http://www.gsconsultants.net/ for more information on other workshops as well as MBTI® and Strong Interest Inventory® certification programs.

Have you come across any challenging profiles while interpreting the Strong Interest Inventory® assessment with your students? Most of these profiles normally fall into two groups: 1) Profiles with few elevations, referred to as “Flat Profiles” and 2) Profiles with many elevations, referred to as “Elevated Profiles”.

So what are Flat Profiles? According to the Strong Interest Inventory® College Profile User’s Guide, written by Jeffrey P. Prince, profiles with scores on all the General Occupational Themes (GOTs) and Basic Interest Scales (BISs) at the “Moderate” level or below are generally considered to be “flat”. The students in this case indicated “little” or “very little” interest level to most of the items on the assessment. These are fairly uncommon for general client populations, but they occur frequently with younger college students.

Elevated Profiles are those with a large number of high scores on the General Occupational Themes and Basic Interest Scales. This usually means that the students indicated “like” or “strongly like” to most of the items on the assessment. This can be frustrating to both the interpreter and the student as the results won’t offer clear direction.

I’ll be sharing some common causes of both Flat Profiles and Elevated Profiles, as well some insights on how to interpret these in the next few weeks on both our Facebook and Twitter pages. If you are not already part of our community, please join us!

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