As a career practitioner, I have a startling admission to share with you.
Over the years many a client has told me some version of, “I’m an ISFJ”.
They pause as though they’ve just dropped a bombshell of insight.
And I’ve said, “Mmhm,” which likely gives the impression I know what they’re talking about.
And then I’ve politely moved the conversation on.
I know they’re telling me the results from participating in the Myers-Briggs test, which is an unreliable and unvalidated popular instrument.
But here’s the truth.
I do not have a clue about what most of those four letters mean.
Nor do I care.
First, there’s the bit about how Myers-Briggs is not a scientifically accepted or valid instrument. (And my own personal experience of being instructed by a loved one back in the day to answer the questions as an extrovert because “that’s what employers want”. I’m an introvert.)
Second, I’m a lot more interested in getting to know you as a person. All of you. And I think that there’s a lot more to you than a few character traits. It strikes me as impossible to reduce a person’s life history, their values, and their strengths to four letters.
And, third, I do not believe that a particular set of inputs points exclusively to a certain type of career path. So I am not going to walk into a conversation with you with a preconceived, limiting notion that you can only do something that matches your “type”.
Are You Buying into This Myth?
There’s a myth out there that there’s some magic bullet that is just going to tell you the answer for your life.
I know from attending career conferences that people have sold and continue to sell these types of testing services to people.
“Ok, sir, sit right there. Answer these 500 questions and do these 20 skills assessments. And we’ll tell you what to do with your life.”
People sell these tests because professionals are so game to buy them. Because they sound easy and painless and safe.
Not because they work.
Our CLARITY Process
At Cardy Career Coaching we do not rely on tests or magic bullets.
Instead, we have a vetted CLARITY process that we’ve used with professionals since 2009 with success.
We get to know you. We connect with you. We see firsthand what is amazing about you in all its complex beauty. We help you to see it too. Then we guide you in how to translate your awesome-ness into the world of work.
It’s not a magic bullet, but it does actually get people the results they’re looking for.
One potential client asked me recently, “Can you share the success rate of getting people onto new career paths and into jobs they enjoy?”
Here’s what I wrote her back:
“Certainly! So success looks different in different cases, and I don’t always get to hear the rest of the story. But in looking at our last 30 clients who completed work with us, by program end 50% had either landed a new job that they wanted, figured out a way to make their current job work for them, or were actively pursuing continuing education to aid with a transition to a new career path.
(I am including one woman who landed a job 2-3 weeks after her program in this percentage. And, as an fyi, the people who were going back to school were doing so because it was what they wanted. If you don’t want to do that, which is how many of our clients feel, we can work around it in most cases.)
There is no such thing as absolute clarity in life, but by program end 100% of these clients had dramatically increased their clarity about their next career steps and all had taken strategic actions to move in their chosen direction. They are now actively working on their transition with greater confidence and capability. As you might imagine, job searches just don’t always wrap up neatly in 1-3 months.
Our average client rating at program end is 4.9 out of 5 in terms of program satisfaction.”
If you want to know what to do with your life, stop taking tests and start getting engaged with a process that works.
Go to cardycareercoaching.com. Click “Apply Today”. Fill out a confidential, risk-free, no-obligation application.
I’d really love to have the opportunity to get to know you in all your awesome, imperfect, unique glory, so that we can connect to your special contribution to the world. (And if you want to tell me your four letters along the way, that’s fine with me.)
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