Career Testing? Get Fit with the Strong Interest Inventory®

Posted on February 22, 2025 by Joel Dietz, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

Gathering the strength to start a career transition often ends as quickly as a New Year’s resolution. This is especially true if you don’t know what kind of work you want.

“I’m totally over my job and trying to figure out what’s next for me. I’m good with details and timelines so maybe I could target a Project Manager career? But how will I get a PMI certification if I’m not already a working Project Manager?…What am I thinking? Most people drive me crazy! Is that even realistic? Hmmm, I loved working with dogs and cats as a teenager, so maybe go back to school to become a vet technician, or even a veterinarian someday? But maybe I just love pets and that’s not a good enough reason, especially since blood freaks me out…plus, all this means a little or a lot of school. Maybe start a business or freelance, but doing what? Maybe be a virtual admin and take on more complex work that pays better? Am I even suited for self-employment?”

This pondering ends abruptly on your sofa, with a glass of wine and a movie you’ve seen three times.

Career indecision is real. You know what you don’t want, not necessarily what you do want.
Years ago, I was looking to leave my then job out of boredom and a lack of growth potential due to a withering organization. Yet my job was comfortable and familiar. A colleague asked me a simple yet provocative question as I told her about a new opportunity I was considering. “Are you running away from something or toward something?” I had been applying to, and was interviewed for a variety of jobs, none of which really inspired me (a red flag that I was trying to flee the lack of challenge and absence of growth.) It’s a good thing I didn’t accept the first pleasingly generous offer I got, or I’d have traded one problem for another. [Sidebar: Sometimes deliberately trading one problem for another can be strategic…taking a job you don’t love as a stepping stone to the thing you are running toward.]

But how does one figure out what they should “run toward?” It probably doesn’t involve your sofa. Your couch is also a great place to avoid figuring out what kind of career transition would excite you next. Relish that time with a comical number of pillows.

If you’re not on a career path that inspires you, you can certainly loaf and procrastinate. You can also tolerate where you are longer and hope for better days but at some point, you’ll be ready to sort things out and MAKE A PLAN.

The Strong Interest Inventory® is one of the most useful career assessments to explore a potential career change.

A qualified career coach partners with you using powerful tools to fuel your inspiration, followed by your further investigation. Career testing in not so much for figuring it all out, but rather helping you generate fresh ideas you may not have considered. You gain the inspiration to explore and learn about those options further. Some of these ideas may be more appealing than those you’ve been mulling over with ambivalence. Other insights may validate that careers you’re drawn to have a high probability of job satisfaction for you and/or your interests are aligned with the interests of those happily performing those jobs.

First developed by E.K. Strong in 1927, and built upon with the work of psychologist John Holland, the assessment has been shining a light on the darkness of career indecision since children in the USA could be legally enslaved by their parents. (We’ve come a long way, baby…err kiddo.) Worry not. The “Strong” isn’t going to recommend a future for you as a Newsboy, Cooper, Tinsmith, Haberdasher, Elevator Operator, Circus Girl, or Milliner. However, I do find it amusing that the field of making and selling hats once had its very own dedicated job title. (For those who might challenge this… yes, technically, this job description still exists behind stages and screens.)

As you would expect, the tool has evolved over 80+ years. Most recently in 2023, with the release of the Strong Interest Inventory 244 Career Assessment. The changes ensure the instrument remains relevant over time, reflects a contemporary career landscape, and provides enough time between updates to study and validate changes extensively before republishing.

“Will the Strong Interest Inventory tell me what kind of job I would perform well?,” you ask. Nope. It’s not an aptitude test, and it doesn’t evaluate your skills.

The Strong Interest Inventory 244 Career Assessment compares your responses to those of a diverse sample of 100,000 happy workers in the USA, split evenly by gender. Your results show you the jobs worked by people whose interests most match yours. Some will be roles you’ve never even considered.
The assessment categorizes career interests into six general occupational themes (GOT), and then maps your interests against each of the of the 32 Basic Interest Scales and 244 job types. The results report your relative strength of interests in each of the 6 GOTs, then ranks specific career ideas for you to consider and/or investigate further.

Additionally, the Strong Interest Inventory includes your results on the Personal Style Scales, insights on a continuum, into the way in which you approach people, learning, and leadership, as well as your appetite for taking risks and working as part of a team vs. more independently. When considered in conjunction with the 244 careers assessed by the Strong, you are able to funnel down your ideas and investigate options more holistically.

The Personal Style Scales consist of:

•People-Things
•Ideas-Data
•Learning Environment
•Leadership Style
•Risk Taking
•Team Orientation

“Can I just go online and take the Strong Interest Inventory?”

Technically, yes. At the same time, if you’re serious about exploring the possibility of a new job or career transition, your career testing results should not be the sole driver of your exploration. Career fit and job satisfaction are more complicated and nuanced than any career testing can reveal. An effective career coach will engage you to explore and validate your life values and work values which may (or may not) logically mesh with a particular career, organization, or position. For example, the Strong might indicate you are highly oriented toward entrepreneurial interests, and you may be very attracted to leadership and business ownership. At the same time, while exploring your values more deeply you may discover that you personally and professionally place a much higher value on security and work-life balance. If you are considering only the Strong results, it’s possible you might pursue work that engages your entrepreneurial spirit, while leaving you perpetually anxious about the roller coaster ride of a start up or the pressure of a high stakes leadership role. A good career coach will hold a mirror up to your blind spots and challenge you to consider your assessment results in the context of who you are and what you have shared, not just the data in a report with colorful bar graphs.

Should you decide to invest in taking the Strong Interest Inventory on your own without the guidance of a career coach, note that there are multiple versions of the assessment and each has different applications.

Fun fact: The Strong is a registered trademark of The Myers-Briggs Company. So what? There are fantastic career reports available that blend your MBTI® type with your Strong results for even more powerful insights.

“How else is the Strong Interest Inventory used?”

While the Strong is readily used as a tool for exploring potential career transition, it is also used for:

•Academic settings – helping students consider college majors or first career choices
•Trade schools – assisting students to define more specifically what they would like to study and do for work
•Career Development – confirming an existing path someone wants to take on their career, while staying open to unexpected possibilities
•Retirement – planning an encore career or considering new or different ways to contribute in a volunteer context

The Strong Interest Inventory is powerful career testing, best utilized in conjunction with the support of a career coach or other qualified professional who can help you interpret the complexity of your results, and assist you to consider a wider degree of factors impacting your overall career and job satisfaction.

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