The post 8 Best Personal Assessment Tests – Career Planning appeared first on BC Jobs Blog.
]]>Self-assessment tests are great for career planning. These tools can help you identify your work-related values, your personality type, and your natural aptitudes. It can bring clarity to your job search and help you find occupations that are suitable for you. This can be a great way to narrow down your job search and save tremendous amounts of time.
Of course, there won’t be one single magic bullet test that shows you the proper career path to take. A combination of different self-assessments will give you a more thorough picture of who you are and what you excel at. Here are 8 personal assessment tests you can try today.
This comprehensive test builds a complete career profile for you. It looks at jobs that fit your interests and aptitudes, but also your work personality and preferred management style. Their website offers a free 60-question test that identifies your strengths, income potential, and optimal work environments. However, you’ll have to subscribe to the premium version to view suitable careers based on your test results.
By measuring your Dominance, Independence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness, this test shows you how you respond to conflicts and approach problem solving, what motivates you to succeed, and what stresses you out. This understanding of your own and others’ personalities and priorities can help you develop better sales strategies or manage people more effectively.
Boasting over 8 million users worldwide, the MAPP test (which stands for Motivational, Appraisal, or Personal Potential) takes less than half an hour to complete and is a great option for students or anyone unsure about what career path to take. The 71-question test asks you to rank statements on an agree-disagree scale. The free version will give you five recommended career paths, but you’ll have to pay for the premium test to access the full 30-page assessment and ranked list of 900 matching careers.
This trio of tests includes the Motives, Values, and Preferences Inventory (MVPI); the Hogan Personality Index (HPI), and the Hogan Development Survey (HDS). The Hogan tests gain credibility from their basis in empirical data as they explore your interpersonal skills and elicit key behavioural tendencies like how you take criticism and feedback, how well you collaborate with groups, and your capacity to lead a team.
This test is based on the five-factor model of personalities, a highly respected model used by psychologists and searchers. It ranks you on five super traits and 23 subtraits that will reveal how well you approach responsibility, express yourself, empathize with others, respond to adversity, and how open you are to outside ideas. As a career planning tool, the Workplace Big 5 helps you determine the right direction to take based on your detailed personal profile.
Are you an Architect or an Inventor? Maybe a Champion or a Fieldmarshal? These personality types may sound like a fantasy role playing game, but Keirsey’s set of 71 behavioural questions offers great insight into how you communicate and lead in the workplace, helping you make adjustments (and improvements) to your career path.
The Individual Development Plan (IDP) doesn’t just tell you what career path suits you, it lays out a comprehensive development plan for achieving those goals and guiding you to success. This test is more focused on science and technology careers and can be used to help researchers and PhD candidates define and pursue career goals. You’ll have to sign up to take the test, but it is free to try.
This test provides you with a clear but thorough insight into how you naturally approach tasks and how people you interact with perceive you. It may be useful for identifying exactly what you bring to the table in teamwork and how to sell that in an interview.
Related Posts: These Jobs Will Be in Demand in 2020 in Canada
Looking For A Job? Use These 6 Tips To Stand Out
Simon Chou is the Vice President of Operations and Growth at BCjobs.ca. Over the course of his career, he carved a niche in brand development, marketing strategy, and online presence for startups. Prior to joining BCJobs.ca, Simon was an advisor for several global blockchain projects including Litecoin, NEM, and Ripple. In the past, he also worked with Fortune 500 companies in the healthcare space through SM Digital—a global marketing agency.
The post 8 Best Personal Assessment Tests – Career Planning appeared first on BC Jobs Blog.
]]>The post Looking For A Job? Use These 6 Tips To Stand Out appeared first on BC Jobs Blog.
]]>For any given job opening (in Canada or elsewhere), hiring managers reportedly only seek interviews from the top 2% of candidates [1]. This puts a lot of pressure on qualified applicants who are not good at demonstrating it on paper.
Consequently, standing out as a top-tier applicant requires training your application skills to craft application materials indicative of both fitness and value and create a polished and well-practiced interview presence.
To increase their odds of acquiring a job, candidates often apply for positions that do not match their expectations for pay, job level, job activities, or commuting time. However, candidates who are overqualified or overly-willing to accept pay cuts or long commutes actually diminishes a candidate’s chances of success.
Moreover, these job search decisions are oppositional to “career adaptability” — which involves developing a sense of curiosity, confidence, and control-acceptance while maneuvering through the job market.
The most inefficient job search practices include:
In each of these cases, hiring managers are likely to rule out applications immediately and as many as 43% of hiring managers consider blacklisting applicants who practice the above-listed behaviors.
Yet the vast majority of job seekers conduct highly inefficient job searches, leading businesses of all sizes, across all industries, to receive an overwhelming number of applications from unqualified candidates is their greatest recruiting challenge.
It follows, then, that candidates who identify job openings they are truly (or very-nearly) qualified for immediately stand out.
While un-qualified applications are off-putting to hiring managers, nearly two-thirds of new hires do not fulfill every single qualification for their position.
That is because 84% of hiring managers will hire an under-qualified candidate if they demonstrate a strong fit for the position in terms of the soft-skills required and the corporate culture in the workplace. This underscores the importance of focusing on soft-skill development as a critical way to offset minor shortages in an applicant’s hard skills.
The soft-skill hiring managers look for most in both well- or under-qualified applicants is on-the-job autonomy. That is, employers value personnel who analyze and modify their own at-work behaviors to create better outcomes (like being more productive or more satisfied, or doing better quality work).
Even in job market sectors where there is little practical autonomy, recruitment still prioritizes hiring applicants with these types of self-management skills (which includes stress-management, self-confidence, and persistence).
The popular adage that landing a job depends largely on “who you, not what you know” holds (to some degree) true across most industries. Today, this applies to both in-person, online, and past-employer networks.
That is because networking grants job seekers access to the “hidden job market” — that is, job openings that are not publicly (or widely) advertised. In fact, between 37%-87% of new hires find out about their job via either social or professional networks. This makes networking a key tool for standing out in a crowded job market.
Related Posts: 5 Signs You Might Be A Star Candidate
7 Mistakes You Should Never Make in a Job Interview
Important Things You Need To Include In Your Resume
The post Looking For A Job? Use These 6 Tips To Stand Out appeared first on BC Jobs Blog.
]]>The post Top 5 Jobs In The Technology Sector 2020 appeared first on BC Jobs Blog.
]]>Consequently, the forces currently driving job market growth within the technology sector include:
The entrenchment of the digital consumer is the most significant immediate and anticipated long-term impact of the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic. That is, successful businesses are already — and will continue — making significant adjustments to speed up digital accessibility and offerings, enhance digital customer experiences, and leverage data to better get ahead of rapidly changing consumer preferences. As a result, job market opportunities for tech-savvy (and tech-experienced) applicants are — and will continue to — boom.
Technology industry analysts predict that the future lies in customer-led automation. More than just robotics, customer-led automation relies on artificial intelligence and machine learning. It is no surprise, then, that the current job market for AI and machine learning specialists has grown by 85% in 2020, making it an increasingly popular and lucrative result in technology industry job searches.
This category includes user experience designers and site reliability engineers; the former being responsible for creating intuitive digital business platforms and the latter being responsible for testing and troubleshooting system issues that negatively impact consumers.
Job search parameters for these positions are unique in that they equally require both hard and soft skills. That said, the job market for “user experience designers” today is (expectedly) highly segmented and splintered.
These specialists design data capture, privacy, and storage solutions and also sort, analyze, and interpret a growing amount of increasingly critical data.
Even before the novel coronavirus outbreak, data science was the projected “king” of emerging job market opportunities in the technology sector. Now, with most firms and organizations making a rapid shift to digital operations, data science specialists have gained essential status.
Web developers (and job search candidates with web development skills) have long enjoyed stable job market growth. As consumer preferences (and pandemic-driven economic and social conditions) continue to favor mobile devices and e-commerce, the job market growth for qualified web developers is expected to outpace all other occupations. More specifically, the greatest job market opportunities will be for web developers with specialized skills in computer gaming, e-learning, and mobile app design.
That said, continuous innovation in the industry means that the characteristics of a “qualified” web developer are — and will likely remain — a moving target.
The unique skills cultivated by cloud storage specialists are increasingly valuable. As a result, back-end storage capabilities are expected to grow parallel to the increase in front-end functionality. And since front-end capabilities are often contingent on cloud storage, the job market for cloud storage specialist(s) is increasingly open.
Job search success in the technology industry depends on precision. Firstly, potential applicants must be precise in their acquisition of skills relevant to specialized requirements. Moreover,
those people interested in applying for technology industry jobs must be precise in their job search habits and composition; firms fill technology-related positions quickly because vacancy is costly.
More than just keeping an up-to-date resume, successful job search candidates should regularly inventory their skills and learn to articulate them so that fast-moving hiring managers take notice.
Simon Chou is the Vice President of Operations and Growth at BCjobs.ca. Over the course of his career, he carved a niche in brand development, marketing strategy, and online presence for startups. Prior to joining BCJobs.ca, Simon was an advisor for several global blockchain projects including Litecoin, NEM, and Ripple. In the past, he also worked with Fortune 500 companies in the healthcare space through SM Digital—a global marketing agency.
The post Top 5 Jobs In The Technology Sector 2020 appeared first on BC Jobs Blog.
]]>The post Which Provinces In Canada Have The Most Job Opportunities In 2020? appeared first on BC Jobs Blog.
]]>Taken together, these conditions can show that job market demand is high or low, that competition within a job market is high or low, and/or that the number of job opportunities in a region is increasing, stagnant, or decreasing [1].
In Canada and elsewhere, the job market context that yields the most job opportunities includes a combination of low (and decreasing) unemployment rates, positive employer outlook, high (and increasing) job vacancy rates, and rising salaries. In this kind of “job seekers’ market,” applicants have the greatest chance of job search success. Early projections for the 2020 job market in Canada largely fit this mold.
Current job market conditions are not as projected.
The social and political responses to the novel coronavirus pandemic — including changes in consumer behavior as well as new and changing industry regulations — have created highly variable job market conditions across the different Canadian provinces. Moreover, though the current job market context in some provinces appears to signal a trajectory toward a return to pre-COVID-19 job seekers’ market conditions, job market analysts are predicting mixed prospects for job opportunities in Canada through Q3 in 2020.
Potential job seekers in Canada should be aware, then, that:
At the time of this writing, the most promising job opportunities in Canada are in Quebec. This is because most of the job market demand indicators are favorable:
Based on these job market conditions, many job seekers in Quebec will likely benefit from fairly high demand for new hires with moderate levels of competition. Though not ideal, the job market outlook in the province is largely positive (except, especially, for Construction sector jobs).
Before the novel coronavirus outbreak began, job market experts pointed to the increased availability of remote work opportunities as a new driving force for job opportunities in Canada. Despite the uncertainty and variability caused by the pandemic, this observation — and the associated predictions for increased job opportunities in tech, telehealth, e-learning, and other online-mediated service jobs — has remained accurate.
As a result, job seekers looking for the best job opportunities in Canada in 2020 should broaden their job search parameters to include remote work positions; in remote-first workplaces, especially, hiring trends have continued largely undiminished and employers prioritize talent over provincial address.
Related Posts: BCJobs.ca Research: Top Job Trends 2020
Jobs in Marketing That Are High in Demand
Simon Chou is the Vice President of Operations and Growth at BCjobs.ca. Over the course of his career, he carved a niche in brand development, marketing strategy, and online presence for startups. Prior to joining BCJobs.ca, Simon was an advisor for several global blockchain projects including Litecoin, NEM, and Ripple. In the past, he also worked with Fortune 500 companies in the healthcare space through SM Digital—a global marketing agency.
The post Which Provinces In Canada Have The Most Job Opportunities In 2020? appeared first on BC Jobs Blog.
]]>The post BCJobs.ca Research: Top Job Trends 2020 appeared first on BC Jobs Blog.
]]>Coming as no surprise, healthcare workers are in some of the most valued positions today. Healthcare work can be very flexible, offering casual, part-time and full-time. You can work as a care aide, a nurse, doctor, dentist, or health support worker. The field is vast and can fit many different needs. Another benefit to working in healthcare is ease of relocation. Many countries are eager to have extra healthcare hands, particularly after the last four months. Having valued skills will make visa applications smooth sailing. Look at the list of top healthcare positions in Canada to see if you’re interested in a career change.
Shockingly, sales associates are some of the hottest jobs on the market. As the face or voice of a product or service, sales associate positions can also be in the remote sector as sales personnel. This
might appeal to some of you looking for remote work during isolation or because you’re looking for a new job. The flexibility for remote positions keeps sales associates as a job trend on the rise.
Check out Indeed for some remote sales positions, or start prepping your resume for heading back into the physical workforce!
Drivers rarely get enough credit, but a lot of our lives would fall apart if drivers didn’t exist. Canada is experiencing a shortage of truck drivers, as drivers retire. According to Canadian Visa, immigration to Canada may be easier if you’re coming as a driver.
As manufacturing has seen a significant decline since CoVID-19, there will be a rising need in manufacturing and machinists to assist with starting up regular operations. As the demand for retail in all sectors increases, manufacturing will follow suit.
This white collar position is currently in demand according to Randstand. If you’ve got experience in sales and a passion for creating and maintaining relationships, growth plans and team management, then this may be a new position worth considering. The significant thing about business development managers is flexibility and the combination of creativity and implementation – few jobs offer both possibilities.
Even CoVID-19 won’t be able to hinder the need for business development managers, and may create a higher need. As businesses reorganize and consider new approaches to working in a post-CoVID world, the need for fresh ideas and the ability to follow through will be an incredible asset.
We hope some of these job trends help you in your plans for the future, preparing for a strange new world, full of opportunities.
Simon Chou is the Vice President of Operations and Growth at BCjobs.ca. Over the course of his career, he carved a niche in brand development, marketing strategy, and online presence for startups. Prior to joining BCJobs.ca, Simon was an advisor for several global blockchain projects including Litecoin, NEM, and Ripple. In the past, he also worked with Fortune 500 companies in the healthcare space through SM Digital—a global marketing agency.
The post BCJobs.ca Research: Top Job Trends 2020 appeared first on BC Jobs Blog.
]]>