Hey there! This is Morgan Noonan, junior at the University of Maryland pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Studio Art. Yes, I get asked "So what are you going to do with that?" quite a bit. I plan on becoming a medical illustrator. Booyah!

I love free things.

This includes: t-shirts, tote bags, ice cream sandwiches, caricatures, hugs, and career advice.

So today I wandered over to Careerpath.com and started taking their career quizzes out of curiosity. In my past experiences, these little creations never seem to offer much insight -- although I do trust the internet to tell me that SubZero is my Mortal Kombat counterpart and Belle is the Disney Princess that I am most like.

The “Job discovery wizard" asks that you evaluate your own strengths and skills and to rank your knowledge bases accordingly.

My closest match was a tie between Family / General practitioner and Obstetrician / Gynecologist, with my intended future as an Illustrator very far down indeed on the potential career list.

Now I do not by any means recommend taking these quiz results too seriously, but what these online services offer should not be wholly dismissed, either.

A useful component generated by my results was the comparative skill set chart. It showed a bar graph indicating my skills in comparison with those required by any field I chose from the drop down menu. It didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know. However, it was a bit of a wake up call to see just how lacking I am in economics and accounting for someone who wants to work in the fine arts.

Next, I spotted the “Career planner quiz”, which was the most involved and thus most accurate test. My interests were characterized as “Blue my strengths as “Yellow”.

People with Blue interests like activities that allow them to be creative… The creativity is often expressed in thinking of new ideas or strategies that can have a broad range of applications. Blue interests often like thinking about the future and planning for long term benefits…Career choices often are: Editor, Journalist, Teacher, Strategic Planner, Consultant, Performing Arts, Marketing, Communications, Research and Development.

People with Yellow strengths are good at managing details and creating sophisticated processes that allow them to get complex work done. Once a game plan has been put in place, it is implemented. Their decisions are based on facts and carefully reasoned. When working with other people, they are fair and democratic and always can be counted on to deliver what they commit to.

This all seemed to check out. However, any confidence in the validity of these tests that I was feeling was severely compromised by the “Color career indicator”. You are presented with little squares of different hues and are asked to rank them based upon which you most enjoy looking at. I found myself torn between magenta and green, realized it was silly, and picked magenta. Because clearly this is an exact science…

Deciding whether you would rather be a Regional sales manager or a Landscape architect or are better at “active listening” than you are at “active learning” does seem arbitrary. However, being able to analyze your own performance and pinpoint what works and what doesn’t is an essential skill.

At most, these online quizzes give you a sense of what direction you should be heading in, and, at the very least, they get you to evaluate yourself as an employee, which provides you with an answer to the age-old question of “what are your strengths and weaknesses?”

So, if you’re looking for a great procrastination opportunity, then take some career quizzes. Think critically about what you do best and what you need to improve upon -- and get some free insight in the process.

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