Figuring out what I wanted to do after my academic career was quite simply one of the most challenging parts of my career transition. It was certainly the most time-consuming part as I attempted to piece together snippets of information about non-academic jobs that would help me understand what I would be good at, and would enjoy doing.
For the first time in my life I undertook some in-depth introspective work about the way I like to work. This didn’t come naturally to me. It wasn’t something I’d put any effort in to before; I’d never asked myself what were my values and in what type of work/workplace would I thrive in? Needless to say, I had a lot of work to do to catch up at that point. Any tool that could have helped speed up this process would have been invaluable to me back then.
If you currently find yourself in a similar position, I’ve a tool that might help. If you’re currently in academia and don’t know which careers might interest you, it can feel like there’s an ocean of options for you to consider. But what if you could assess these options with the clarity of knowing the working environments in which you would thrive and provide most value? Here I discuss a tool that can help you do this.
New Online Test
In her book ‘What is Out There for Me?’ Natalia Bielczyk invites PhDs to consider what is your perfect working environment? In it, Natalia raises the concept of ‘Tribes.’ Tribes denote the working environments that will enable you to thrive. The tribes that align with you depend on your own career aspirations and character as a professional.
Recently Natalia has developed this concept of ‘your tribe’ into an online test that enables you to identify ideal working environments by answering a series of pre-defined questions. Coupled to this, the test simultaneously evaluates profiles in which you naturally create value (i.e. the roles in which you would thrive as a professional).
Natalia’s test (The Ontology of ValueTM) can help you identify the roles and tribes that best suit you.
How the test works
The test analyses 4 fundamental aspects of your professional identity:
- Your natural working style (e.g. work focus, self-discipline, and problem solving).
- Your type of mind (e.g. multitasking, creativity and confidence).
- Your relationships with others (e.g. supervisors, peers, and conflict management).
- Your values and beliefs (e.g. career management, intuition, and social aptitude).
The analysis is based on your answers to 32 questions for each of the 4 aspects above. Once submitted you receive a detailed description of the results, which provides you with the tribe (public institutions, corporations, consultancies, small and medium-sized enterprises, start-ups, academia, freelancing, and entrepreneurship), and roles (creator, problem-solver, linchpin, manager, achiever, missionary, contributor, and investor) that suit you best.
These pointers can help you focus your efforts in searching for roles in organisations that fit your profile.
Test evaluation
So I decided to take the test myself. Took me over an hour to answer all the questions (128 in total). But you it doesn’t need to be completed all in one go, you can save your answers and come back to the test whenever you want.
Once you hit submit, the tool calculates your responses and compiles a report, which you’ll receive by email. Overall, it’s a quick and seamless process. Alongside your report, you also receive two e-books:
- The first helps you interpret your report by providing a detailed description of the tribes/roles that most strongly associate with your answers.
- The other is a 63-page guide on how to navigate the job market. It includes details on how to discover your core competencies, job hunting, and job interview performance.
The report is detailed:
- First it provides a schematic of the quantitative results
- Followed by a table summary of your top profiles/working environments
- The rest is a description of what this all means in the context of your own scores
Here’s my own top 3 scores in the summary table:
I was struck at how accurate the test evaluated my own professional life. My top working environments, represent all those I’ve previously worked in (in reverse chronological order); I currently work in a multinational, before that I worked in bespoke consultancy agencies for the pharma industry, and before that academia.
It’s difficult to tease out if serendipitously I somehow managed to find my top working environments in the past, or if my experience has imprinted to such an extent, I now operate as the ideal employee for such environments. To this end it would be interesting to see where ‘academia’ features in the ranking of most transitioning academics.
The profiles (roles) also resonated (particularly the top two). I align as both a Manager (in my professional life) and as a Linchpin (a communicator and community facilitator through this blog).
The associated e-book provides a synopsis of the strengths and weaknesses of each role type, which I found particularly helpful. It also provides a description of the recruitment process for each tribe description, which is particularly helpful for professionals undertaking a career transition.
During my own career transition, I tended to use online career tests that provide career options (e.g. myIDP) sparingly. Whilst a list of possible job titles can provide some direction in terms of additional options to explore, it falls short of assessing if the suggested careers are right for you. In reality this can only be answered by further research and speaking to those doing the job, and there will be numerous options well suited to you that aren’t listed in such tools.
This is why I prefer the approach taken by Natalia. She asks you to consider where you best fit in terms of both the role you can play in your career, and the possible environments in which you might thrive playing such a role. The rest is up to you – you do the research and find the job descriptions that fit within this framework. This keeps your horizons broad yet focused, providing a better chance of finding a great career fit.
The disadvantage of Natalia’s test vs some other online tools, is that it’s not free to use. I took the professional test priced at $34.83 (there’s a student version that’s slightly less).
Personally, I think it’s reasonably priced and if it helps you find the career path of your dreams by providing a compass for your job search, it’s cheap. But you’ll need to weigh up for yourself if you feel you understand your working style and personal values enough to help navigate your career search, without the need for such investment.
Natalia’s also provides an option to tag the test to individual consultations or an associated course at significantly higher price points (details on the test options can be found here).
Accessing the Test
I feel The Ontology of ValueTM test can be helpful for transition academics, not only those who’ve yet to decide on a future career path, but also for those who would like to double-check their decision marries with their personal working style and values.
If you’re interested in taking the test, here are the links and use the code above for your discount:
- Student Test (for Master’s students and 1st/2nd yr PhD students)
- Professional Test (for 3rd yr+ PhD students and beyond)
If you decide to take the test I hope it helps you discover roles in which you would create value and thrive. Good luck and let me know how you get on!
Vicky