What career is right for you?
Find out with the
Self-Directed Search career aptitude test!
The leader in career aptitude assessment since 1970.
Are you a TRIO, FYE, or IEC program?
We can help!
Proven career tools that link students to success!
Individual Test Taker
The Self-Directed Search is a proven career assessment tool that matches your personality to fields of study or career choices that fit you best.
Career Specialist
Help your clients and students find a new future. The SDS is an easy to administer assessment that can help you support your students and clients.
What makes the SDS the Gold Standard career assessment and exploration tool?
50 YEARS
worth of trust
40+ MILLION
times administered
1.4k+
occupations on Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network (O*NET)
30+ LANGUAGES
supported
20 MINUTES
to complete test
ZERO
special training needed to administer and score
3.5k+
published research studies and references support the SDS
Put the experience of 40+ years of career assessment success to work for you!
The SDS family of assessment and intervention tools are established, theory-based career resources that help students and job seekers navigate the path to a fulfilling career.
Why is the SDS the best career aptitude test?
Simply put, the SDS gives you MORE. It takes a deeper look than other tests. This begins with asking more questions, which enables the SDS to reveal more insights. Those questions are segmented by relevance, and responses are clearcut Yes and No. This format is easier to follow for the test taker. Then the SDS interprets these responses utilizing reliable, scientifically valid data. This results in strongly targeted feedback for each individual, allowing the SDS to link to jobs in O*NET like no other career assessment can.
Take a look at how one leading free career inventory test stacks up against all you get with the SDS.
What you get for free
60 Questions
Results not personalized
5-point Likert Scale
No segmentation of questions
Cumbersome to navigate
Clunky UI/UX
Results don't save
Individual results only
What you get with SDS
250+ Questions
Personalized results
Simple Yes/No format
Questions are segmented into similar interests
Easy and enjoyable to navigate
Optimal UI/UX experience
Customized report can be saved, sorted, and revisited
Can accumulate and group results for data tracking
Learn more about the six personality types for your clients!
Think about people as having different levels of interest in six areas: Realistic (R), Investigate (I), Artistic (A), Social (S), Enterprising (E), and Conventional (C). Throughout this report, we use these letters to describe these six areas. The three letters that describe you best are combined to make your Summary Code. The figure below describes each of the six types.
The six-sided figure (hexagon) shows the similarities and differences between the six types. Types that are next to each other are the most similar, while types that are far away or across from each other are the most different. For example, Realistic and Investigate types tend to have similar interests. However, Realistic and Social types tend to be more different.
