Want to Upskill, Change Careers or Start a Business? You Should Take this Personality Test to Guide You

Think your best is behind you at 50? Rubbish, we don’t subscribe to any of those stereotypes.

After all, life comes in seasons, each building on the previous and preparing you for the next. If you are considering starting a new business, a change of careers or simply wanting to upskill and learn something new, taking a C-me Colour Profile personality test could be the very best next step you take.

C-me Colour Profiles are a psychometric test, based on behaviours rather than personality. Understanding your behaviours and your ‘preferred ways of doing things’ is a vital component towards better self-understanding. The profiles are quick to generate and highly accurate. They are also simple, visual, and focus on application, meaning they serve as a powerful ongoing coaching resource.

Starting something new or considering a career change can easily become focussed on what a person will do, to the detriment of first understanding who a person is. This issue is particularly relevant for people who have been in careers for many years, have gained valuable and extensive experience and have probably been operating at a fast pace for some time. Slowing down to reflect could be the all-important step that helps inform the very best next decision.

Do You Know What Your Current Skillset Is?

Skills are often categorised as ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills - the former being things such as computer literacy, business analysis, UX design and technical skills; the latter being creativity, emotional intelligence, collaboration, conflict management, listening skills. This categorisation can be a little misleading because the words are loaded with meaning and preconception. In reality, ‘hard skills’ are not any harder to learn than soft skills (and are often easier in fact!) and ’soft” skills’ and far from woolly nice-to-haves.

Perhaps a more helpful and simple way to look at skills is simply to think about them as ‘resources a person has that enables them to do their very best work and bring out the best in those around them’. Viewed this way, skills are inherently relational; less a fixed possession and more an ever-changing resource. This means that upskilling is as important as ever.

Upskilling is the process whereby an employee learns additional skills to be better equipped to do their job. Note: This is different to reskilling, where the focus is learning entirely new skills that do not always relate to a previous skill set. Embracing upskilling requires mental growth and a hunger to continue professional development. Underpinning this is a requirement to display an attitude of humility.

The World Economic Forum regularly publishes it Future of Jobs Report and this is something well worth a regular review. According to the 2020 report, 50% of employees will need reskilling by 2025, particularly fuelled by the current speed of technology advancement. This has implications for all workers, not just those entering into work for the first time. Top skills anticipated for work by 2025 can be viewed below:

C-me Colour profiles are invaluable resources that support the upskilling process. The focus on behaviour enables a person to think about how their preferred way of doing things impacts how they approach their work and what impact (positive and less positive) this can have on others.

Each section of the report provides an opportunity to reflect on a bespoke series of statements (blue statements at the top of each page) and then relate these preferences to the behaviours of others (colourful diagram at the bottom of each page). The great advantage of this is that personal skills can be considered in relation to others.

In addition, the Blind Spots, Handling Setbacks and Role Agility sections of the High Performance profile are a great resource to help a person think through opportunities to upskill. This will often involve developing a greater behavioural range, enabling a person to flex into behaviours that are perhaps less familiar, but are necessary when working with other people.

What Defines a Career Change?

Finding meaningful and fulfilling work is important on so many levels. A typical person might work 90,000 hours in their life – equivalent to 13 years and two months. Career changes can play a vital role in helping keep people stimulated and contributing their very best. This can involve a small sideways move (perhaps taking on additional responsibility or a different role within the same organisation), or a more dramatic change to a different industry altogether.

According to the recruitment agency Apollo Technical, the average person will have a total of 12 jobs in their lifetime and 29% will complete a total career change at some point.

The prospect of a career change – large or small – can feel pretty daunting, especially in today’s economic climate, which is riddled with so much volatility and uncertainty. This can compound the struggles that many dissatisfied workers face – wanting to make a move but lacking the clarity or courage to take that first step. Yet, when you dig below the surface, most workers are more interested in the way they work and the culture of the workplace, than they are necessarily in the specific work they are doing.

Moving careers is far more common today than a generation ago, spearheaded by the Millennial generation. The backdrop to this is the general trend in upward mobility and the increased opportunities that technology is presenting. That said, Millennials are increasingly making greater demands on their employers in terms of working conditions, flexibility, and benefits, and setting a precedent with it. Career change is no longer the ‘big thing’ that it perhaps was.

Recruiters are increasingly using C-me’s profiling tool to help sift through final stage candidates, helping advise employers on the person who is the best fit behaviourally to the specific work culture and role requirements.

Prospective employees will also be greatly helped by using a C-me profile because of the help they give in reflecting on behavioural preference. Job searchers will be able to present themselves more accurately and paint a fuller picture to a potential employer if they are more self-aware. It is worth noting that job interviews ought not to be one-directional. For prospective employees, it would be wise to interview the organisation as much as the employer interview the candidate.

Does the organisation promote a more innovative, faster paced and risk-taking approach or a more measured, reflective and processed one?

Where the answer to this is “No”, time need not be wasted pursuing the wrong fit.

The colours used in C-me’s profiling do not map neatly onto particular jobs. There is far more nuance involved and what is right for one person may not be de facto right for the next. That said, certain patterns do emerge in particular industries. More technical production and engineering organisations tend to have a predominance of the Blue Colour Preference (logic, process, detail, rigour). Educational organisations tend to have a greater predominance of Green Colour Preference (relational, values-driven, supportive, collegiate). Start-ups tend to have more Yellow and Red Colour Preferences (determination, drive, innovation, risk-taking).

Knowing one’s own colour preference can help people reflect on how they are likely to be able to contribute to a particular organisation and also predict some of the inevitable frustrations that are likely to occur.

What Are the Key Skills Needed for Starting a New Business?

New businesses are by definition unique and each one will require different skills. Creativity and a degree of risk-taking are obvious behaviours common to most new business owners. Yet it would be short-sighted to assume that just because person X is starting a business, they have to possess all the skills needed to get this business going. The beauty of teams (formal and informal) is that each person brings a different contribution with the output being greater than the sum of its parts. Certain roles can be outsourced. Other roles can be filled by paid positions, as a business plan allows.

Better knowing oneself is vital for being able to discern blind spots and the gaps that other people can fill. Even the most self-aware people will not see themselves as clearly as they might perhaps like to believe.

C-me’s psychometric tests provide a profile that can be used as a mirror to encourage deeper self-reflection. Most users declare an 85% or greater resonance, meaning the generated statements are accurate and therefore meaningful. Reading the profiles with a trusted friend provides an opportunity to really root out possible blind spots and help people make wiser decisions about whether or not to start a new business, founded on a more realistic assessment of self.