TEST 3

Paper 1: Reading

(1 hour)

PART 1
You are going to read a newspaper article about careers advice. For questions 18, choose
the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.
Mark your answers on the separate answer sheet.

TEST 3

Finding the career that fits your personality

If youve finished your exams and have
absolutely no idea what to do next,
youre not alone, says Sheridan Hughes,
an occupational psychologist at Career
Analysts, a career counselling service.
At 18, it can be very difficult to know
what you want to do because you dont
really know what youre interested in.
Careers guidance, adds Alexis Hallam,
one of her colleagues, is generally poor
and people can end up in the wrong job
and stay there for years because theyre
good at something without actually
enjoying it.
To discover what people are good
at, and more fundamentally, what they
will enjoy doing, Career Analysts give
their clients a battery of personality
profile questionnaires and psychometric
tests. An in-depth interview follows,
in which the test results are discussed
and different career paths and
options are explored with the aid of
an occupational psychologist. Career
Analysts offers guidance to everyone,
from teenagers to retirees looking
for a new focus in life. The service
sounded just what I needed. Dividing
my time as I do between teaching and
freelance journalism, I definitely need
advice about consolidating my career.
Being too ancient for Career Analysts
student career option guidance and not,
unfortunately, at the executive level
yet, I opted for the career management
package. This is aimed at people who
are established in their jobs and who
either want a change or some advice
about planning the next step in their
careers.
Having filled in a multitude of
personality indicator questionnaires at
home, I then spent a rather gruelling
morning being aptitude-tested at Career
Analysts offices. The tests consisted

of logical reasoning followed by verbal,

mechanical and spatial aptitude papers.
Logical reasoning required me to pick
out the next shape in a sequence of
triangles, squares and oblongs. I tried
my best but knew that it was really a
lost cause. I fared rather better when
it came to verbal aptitude - finding the
odd one out in a series of words couldnt
be simpler. My complacency was shortlived, however, when I was confronted
with images of levers and pulleys for the
mechanical aptitude papers. My mind
went blank. I had no idea what would
happen to wheel X when string Y was
pulled.
At home, filling in questionnaires, I
had been asked to give my instinctive
reaction (not an over-considered one) to
statements like: It bothers me if people
think Im being odd or unconventional,
or I like to do my planning alone
without interruptions from others.
I was asked to agree or disagree on a
scale of one to five with I often take on
impossible odds, or It is impossible for
me to believe that chance or luck plays
an important role in my life. I was told
to indicate how important I consider
status to be in a job, and how important
money and material benefits.
The questions attempt to construct
a picture of the complete individual.
Using aptitude tests alongside
personality profiling, occupational
psychologists will, the theory goes,
be able to guide a client towards a
rewarding, fulfilling career. Some
questions are as straightforward as
indicating whether or not you would
enjoy a particular job. Designing aircraft
runways? Preparing legal documents?
Playing a musical instrument? Every
career going makes an appearance and,
as I was shown later, the responses tend

to form a coherent pattern.

Having completed my personality and
aptitude tests, I sat down with Sheridan
Hughes, who asked me fairly searching
personal and professional questions.
What do my parents and siblings do
for a living? Why had I chosen to do an
English degree? I need to get a picture
of you as a person and how youve come
to be who you are, she explained. What
we do works because its a mixture
of science and counselling. We use
objective psychometric measures to
discover our clients natural strengths
and abilities and then we talk to them
about what they want from life.
There were no real surprises in my
own test results, nor in the interview
that followed it. Were interested in
patterns, Mrs Hughes explained, and
the pattern for you is strongly verbal
and communicative. This was putting it
rather kindly. I had come out as average
on the verbal skills test and below
average in logic, numerical, perceptual
and mechanical reasoning. My spatial
visualization was so bad it was almost
off the scale. A career in cartography,
navigation, tiling or architecture would
not be playing to your strengths, she
said delicately.
Mrs Hughes encouraged me to
expand the writing side of my career
and gave me straightforward, practical
suggestions as to how I could go about
it. Widen the scope of your articles, she
said. You could develop an interest in
medical and psychological fields. These
latter, she said, would sit comfortably
with an interest in human behaviour
indicated on my personality-profiling
questionnaires. She suggested that I
consider writing e-learning content for
on-line courses, an avenue that would
never have occurred to me.

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1 Which of the following is mentioned in the first paragraph?

A people underestimating their own abilities
B people accepting inappropriate advice
C people being unwilling to take risks
D people constantly changing their minds
2 What does the writer say about Career Analysts in the second paragraph?
A It is about to offer a service for people at executive level.
B The range of services it offers is unique.
C She was initially doubtful that it could be useful to her.
D Only one of its services was relevant to her.
3 What happened when the writer took the aptitude tests?
A She found two of the papers extremely difficult.
B She put in very little effort on any of them.
C She didnt understand what she was required to do on one of them.
D The papers were not what she had been expecting.

5 The writer says that the idea behind the questionnaires is that
A people will find some of the questions quite hard to answer.
B the answers to them and the aptitude tests will provide all the
necessary information.
C they will encourage people to have new ideas about possible careers.
D they will give a more accurate picture of people than the aptitude tests.
6 Some of the questions Sheridan Hughes asked concerned the writers
A opinions of the tests and questionnaires.
B relationships with family members.
C main regrets.
D progress through life.
7 The writer felt that during the interview, Mrs Hughes
A was keen not to upset her concerning her test results.
B seemed surprised at how badly she had done in the tests.
C was being honest about her strengths and weaknesses.
D preferred to avoid talking about her test results.
8 The advice Mrs Hughes gave to the writer included the suggestion that she should
A think about taking a course on writing.
B concentrate only on writing and not on any other kind of work.
C increase the number of subjects she writes about.
D do something she had previously considered unappealing.

TEST 3

4 What does the writer say about the statements on the questionnaires?
A She thought about them for longer than she was supposed to.
B She found some of them rather strange.
C One of them focused on her attitude to risk.
D One of them concerned her current situation only.

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