Now that you’ve completed the Profiler, it is time to complete the Basic Interests Survey.
The Basic Interests Survey is free, 377 question interest assessment that will take you about 30 to 60 minutes to complete. It was developed by Dr. James Rounds and his colleagues. It is scientifically-supported and its greater level of detail will provide more accurate scores for the six types and will also provide handy scores for 30 interest areas (e.g., business, engineering, outdoor-agriculture, performing arts, skilled trades, teaching). One cool thing about the Survey is that you can see which interest areas increase or decrease your score for a given type. Referring back to the example regarding machines/nature/athletics and the Realistic type, you can see how the scores on the seven different interest areas influence the Realistic type score. This can help resolve questions about whether or not a given type does capture at least some important aspects of your career interests. These interest area scores can also help guide you during Step 2 of the SCEA. This is why I think taking the time to complete the Survey is a worthwhile investment.
To complete the Survey, you can download it as a Microsoft Excel file. The great thing about completing the survey in this format is that it will automatically calculate your Survey scores and it allows you to enter your scores from the O*NET Interest Profiler so that you can compare your six scores from the two sources. This can be very helpful in deciding which types truly capture important parts of your career interests. The scores are automatically plotted in a Bar Chart for easy viewing. You can then save this file on your computer’s hard drive so that you can refer back to it as needed. You can also download an example of a completed Survey and results.
Here’s a video where I walk through how to complete the Survey, enter the Profiler scores, and interpret the results in the table and Bar Chart (coming soon).
Now that you’ve been able to compare your Profiler and Survey results, you can proceed to classifying your types.