Monday, 17 February 2014

Career Tests: Can A Test Help You Choose The Right Career Path?

I'm at that stage in my life where I really need to work out what I want to do with my life. You imagine various jobs, careers and lifestyles when you're young. Then you start to really think about options before university or college. What subjects should I study? What would be good? What career opportunities will going to this university and doing this degree have? What do I want to be when I'm older? Then it's suddenly final year and you know you're about to enter the big bad world and need to start thinking seriously about your life choices.

I find it interesting how career tests work. Obviously there are questions that try to determine your personality type. What I find interesting is the theory behind it. The tests that I've done differentiate different personalities by using your answers to see if you're more an extraverted or introverted thinker, a sensing or intuitive information gatherer, a thinking or feeling based decision maker, and if you live based on judging or perceiving things. For the full definition of these four categories click here.

You're not going to be solely one or the other, so your answers calculate what percentage you are of each category. Thereby using the four that you predominantly are to determine what types of jobs are suited for your personality, and way of thinking and living. There are 16 possible combinations so 16 personality types. They are the following:
  1. The Visionaries and Inventors
  2. The Executives and Chiefs
  3. The Inspirers and Advocates
  4. The Givers and Mentors
  5. The Doers and Persuaders
  6. The Guardians and Overseers
  7. The Performers and Entertainers
  8. The Caregivers and Supporters
  9. The Thinkers and Engineers
  10. The Scientists and Strategists
  11. The Idealists and Dreamers
  12. Protectors and Confidants
  13. Mechanics and Craftsmen
  14. The Duty Fulfillers and Examiners
  15. The Artists
  16. Nurturers and Defenders
If you want to take a career test then I'd suggest not researching about these personality types. Instead, you should just try a test and then read about the different personality types after seeing and reflecting on your own results. If you follow me on twitter then you know I tweeted about a particular career test. I've taken a few of these online tests and I found this one to be the most accurate.

Example: My Results
I don't want to write too much about my results in case you do want to take the test. I will say that I agree with most of the things said in my results. My sister also took the test. She's a successful High School teacher and she also agreed with her personality analysis and career traits. It described her artistic and practical nature, and a lot of the career traits highlighted corresponded with her actual personality and correlated with her current job as a Technology teacher. She also said she recommends this test.

Mine named how good my people and analytical skills are, how I tackle problems with logic and how I reach my goals by making a plan working backwards with the goal as a starting point. To which I'm quite impressed with. It's a general but quite specific analysis. And as I said before, most of it is quite accurate, too.

Doing these career tests has helped me a bit to workout what I want to do when I go back to England. I wouldn't use it this as a way to decide on a career. It's mostly interesting. But it can also help you to think about what jobs you'd be good at. Either because you disagree or disagree with the answers, or because it recommends things you never thought about before. It's definitely given me a bit more confidence in my strengths and in what I think I want to do. It's also given me some more ideas to look into to. Which is helpful seeing as I'm starting over, from the very beginning again.

If you want to see my results in full then scroll down. If not, then stop and take the test for yourself and analyse your own results. Please feel free to leave a comment about your results and your views on them. It'll be interesting to see.


















Career relevant traits:
• Have intuition to understand situations and people 
• Strong ideals and principles 
• Profound and complex 
• Natural leaders 
• Sensitive and compassionate towards others 
• Service and future orientated. 
• Place value on deep authentic relationships 
• Are reserved about showing their true selves 
• Only like dealing with details when they enhance or promote your goals. 
• Always looking for the meaning and purpose in everything 
• Visionary and creative 
• Intense and highly strung 
• Can work with logic and ration. INFJs use their intuition to understand the goal and work backwards towards achieving it. 

Being an INFJ means you have a quest to live a life of meaning and purpose, and therefore your career needs to be more than a job, but has to be something that can live up to your principles and feel right. As an INFJ, your intuition is mixed with your strong values, you have a sense of knowing and therefore are natural and comfortable as leaders and work well as such, although you can work as a follower if you are taking directions from someone you fully support, otherwise you will not be happy in your situation.
In the outside world, you place a great deal of importance in having things in order, and having the best system for getting things done, whilst always reevaluating the priorities in your life. On the other hand you can operate internally with spontaneity. Your intuition gives you great insight into things, and you are often right about something, even with little background information.
Your penetrating insight into other people and issues, and the internal way you deal with this, means you don’t easily share what information you obtain about others unless you choose to share it. You are deep and complex, usually private and therefore difficult to understand.
However, as an INFJ you are genuinely warm as you are complex, and you have a special place in your heart for those close to you, for which you can see and feel the depth of your caring. In tune to other’s emotions you avoid hurting other’s feelings. Often the perfectionist, you may wrestle with finding peace as you feel that there is more to improve your world and the lives of others around you. Your high expectations means you strive to exist in a state of continual growth and you easily overlook your own accomplishments.
Like other INFJs, your workplace should be one of creatively and independence. You most likely have a natural affinity for art and the sciences, as well as being found in service orientated positions. You should avoid working with very detailed tasks, or else you be in the other extreme, where you are working so meticulously you cannot see the big picture and can be highly critical of others who are not being as meticulous.

Friday, 7 February 2014

Blogging Over The World

Blogging seems to be taking over the world. Since starting in the 90's, blogging has grown in popularity for people who write as well as reads them. Blogging lets us write, discuss, tell our stories and voice our opinions, and we're making full use of it. It's become a worldwide trend to read and write blogs. It began as a simple way to write, share and discuss topics of interests and views. Now it's become a popular hobby and, for some, a money source. There are now thousands of blogs with thousands of readers on multiple blogging sites, as well as a lot of companies paying to be advertised on these blogs. Here's a list and breakdown of the best and most popular blogging websites:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/best-free-blogging-sites/

Luckily Blogger is on the list. Woop woop! Hopefully this is good news for me and my blog. Fingers crossed!

So, why has blogging become a trending hobby?
In all honesty, I know my blog isn't the best blog. I won't ever claim to be great at blogging or writing. I have many skills and I have things I'm proud of, but blogging and my blog isn't one of them. That doesn't deter me from wanting to blog though. I suppose that's one of the appeals to blogging. You don't have to be a great writer or anything. All you need is a device to type your posts and internet to upload your blogs. Both of which most people have thanks to modern day and the advancement of technology.

Like I said, there are thousands of blogs out there all over the internet. They can be accessed by millions of people from all over the world. It's one of the amazing things about blogging. Even if you don't have a target audience, your audience is basically the whole world. Anyone with internet access can stumble upon your blog page or even just one post. They can read one or follow every post your write. They can be young or old, male or female, from anywhere around the world. Depending on how you view it, it can be an amazingly great thing or an amazingly scary thing. But we write for people to read right? So for bloggers this is an amazingly great thing!

If you follow me on twitter (if you're interest then my account is this one: https://twitter.com/KwaiLin22) then you might have seen me tweeting about a particular blog I've been reading. The writer is an old school friend of mine. I've known her since I was 4 because we've been friends and have gone to the same Primary and High schools. I don't recommend her blog because of this. I'm not the type of person to say good things for the sake of saying it. I genuinely think this blog is a good read. She's a good example of why I like blogs. Her perspective and style is great. She's a professional writer and you can really see that in her posts. You also get a sense of her personality. She's a very bright girl; in both sense of the word. She's smart and very upbeat. Her posts are clever, interesting and insightful. When she isn't talking about happy things, she stills shines a light of positivity on negative topics. Not in a corny way or anything. In a realistic, insightful way. Which is quite refreshing. If you want to see what I mean, click on the link below. I honestly think it's worth a read. I particularly find her posts about journalism quite interesting.

http://absolutelylucy.wordpress.com/

I guess Lucy blogs because she loves to write. Hence her following journalism. Also, because it's obviously something she's talented in. For me, blogging isn't so much about talent or career. While I do find it helps me to practice and develop my writing skills I think I mostly do it because it allows me to organise and convey my thoughts, share my experiences and knowledge, and it provides a sense of escapism. It helps me to focus on specifics; distracting my mind from other matters or helping me to block out everything and really analyse and talk about what's been going through my mind.

For a lot of people, I think blogging is a hobby. It's a hobby that some people get and others just don't. Some of you have been amazing and have 'got' my views and where I'm coming from, or at least have read and tried to see it from my point of view. My family haven't read my blogs but they've said they don't know why I feel I need to write and put everything on the internet for any Tom, Dick or Harry to see. I get their point. I can't really explain why. Why can't I just write a private diary or journal? I'm not engaging with you per say. I know you're out there reading and I get feedback, but I'm never talking with you one-on one. Nor am I writing to myself. So what's the point? It does sound a bit strange, doesn't it? But in saying all of this, why not write on the internet for all to see? I'm not hurting anyone. I'm not disclosing personal information that will harm me either (at least I hope nothing I have or will write will be held against me in the future). It might be a generation gap problem. Although I know a lot of older people who blog, twitter, facebook and  are active on other social media websites. So maybe it's just a different ways of thinking problem. I'm not sure.

Either way, it's unarguable that blogging is a trending social media. It's crazy how big it's become. Do you know something else that's crazy? Blogging has not only expanded, but it has also evolved and modernised further. From writing with a pen and paper to blogging, and now we have vlogging. Ever heard of it? It's video blogging. It's also one of the biggest growing trends. It's taken blogging to a whole new level. It's trending worldwide and not only has it led to jobs but it's become a job. Check this link out:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/24726895

It's mental, isn't it? Again, depending on how you view it, it can be seen as amazingly great or amazingly scary. Society's growing, evolving and modernising, and things will keep changing. Expressing oneself has become something that more and more people want to do. People want to be heard. People want to express themselves and have people acknowledge or/and get a reaction from others. This is how blogging and vlogging have come about. They're easy, accessible means to exactly that. There are of course some backlash and problems developing and growing because of this advancement, but that's another story and will be followed up on another post. For now, I want to concentrate on the positivity of blogging and how it's taking over the world by storm. Blogging over the world, if you will. (Bad joke, sorry).

I'm Back!!

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. I've been really busy preparing. I'm leaving Korea soon, then I'll be travelling Asia and returning to England to build a career and home for myself. What's going through my mind? What isn't? I've been busy stressing, organising, thinking and working out everything for the past couple of months. Hopefully you can understand why I haven't been able to blog lately. And I come with good and bad news. You can choose which one you read first.

Bad news: I usually ask for the bad news first. I like leaving it on a good note when possible. So this post is to declare that I'm back and blogging again, however, like I said, I'm leaving soon and will be travelling Asia. So there will still be a lack of posts and I won't be able to blog while I travel for a month either.

Good news: But the good news is that I think I've come up with a solution to blog a bit more before I disappear for a month (I doubt I will have the time to blog while I'm travelling Asia). While trying to write new posts, I'm going to create two new posts that I will update as time passes. So there won't be a lot of new posts but ones with added bits. They will be about travelling and moving out. They will be about the preparation stages, what to do and not to do, and what to expect. Hopefully they will be helpful for first timers as well as experienced ones. Both travelling and moving can be stressful and complicated experiences. Trust me, I'm an O.C.D person and no matter how organised I'm being at the moment I can't help but feel like the mountain of things I need to still do is getting any smaller, nor are the things that I have finished doing seems to make me feel any better. So if you're new to either experiences or are scared you've forgotten something, then check my posts to help take the weight off your shoulders.

Also, I'll try to add some travel posts about my experiences in Asia after I've settled back in England. In case you're curious I'll tell you now where I'll be visiting. Macau, Bangkok and Phuket in Thailand, Penang and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Singapore, Kuching the East side of Malaysia, Taiwan, Philippines, and then Jeju Island and Busan in the Southeast of Korea before heading back to Incheon to say goodbye to my friends and leaving for England to say hello to my other friends and family. Yeah, I'm planning to do all that in 28 days. See why I'm stressing? If you know me you know I'm always stressing, but that's not the point. I think I have a good reason to stress right now.... For once...

One more thing about my 'moving out' post. It should be useful to anyone moving out, but I also think it'll be specifically helpful to people living in Korea that'll move back to their home countries. More specifically to any Brits living in Incheon. At least I hope so. To any 'foreigners' in or have been to Korea reading this will know that it's easy to meet Americans and Canadians in Korea but not as easy to meet Britons, and any British foreigner in Korea will know it's even harder to find useful information specifically for Britons. Such as regulations about our pension or tax, or how much it costs to send packages home or how to deal with HM Revenue before leaving and while in Korea, or knowing what are our rights while over here etc...