REVIEW: DISC Profile: Career-Style Report by PeopleKeys

My new high schooler and I had a chance to review the DISC Profile: Career-Style Report by PeopleKeys.

 

WHAT IS IT?:

The DISC Profile: Career-Style Report is an online survey that helps users narrow down potential career choices that match their behavioral style.  The resulting report focuses largely on:

• workplace style
• communication with others
• strengths
• potential limitations
• contributions to a team.

At the time of purchase, you will receive an email with downloadable instructions and key codes to access your report. 

Once you’ve completed the online survey, you can download the results.  You also have the option to have your results be available to someone other than yourself by calling to request that in advance.  Regardless of how many key codes you purchase, the reports and accounts you set up will not be linked together in any way unless you purchase one of their packages or call in advance.

You can purchase the Career Style Report for $32.00.

 

OUR EXPERIENCE:

When I received the email with our access code for this survey, I simply forwarded the email to my 14 year old son, Hayden, who was able to go online and begin taking the survey himself.  He said it asked him a lot of situational types of questions about what he would do in different scenarios.  He said he was able to complete the survey in about 10-15 minutes, so it was easily done in one sitting.  However, the instructions did state that if you needed to exit and save your progress in the middle of the survey, you could do that and resume completion of the survey at another time.

Hayden was able to immediately access and print his Career Style Report and pass it on to me for review.  This was a great opportunity for us to sit down together to discuss the results and potential career choices. 

My purpose for having Hayden complete this survey was to help him pinpoint his strengths and weaknesses and then figure out how those might affect and align with various types of careers.  As he entered public charter high school this school year, he did not know what he wanted to do in terms of a career.  He wasn’t even sure what field he might be interested in pursuing.  So my hope was that this report would give him a starting place of what he might consider more closely in the future.  I also hoped that it could perhaps be a useful tool at some point for his school counselor to use in helping to prepare him for college and/or a career.

I was not disappointed!  The report provided us with a lot of insightful information, and I must say that I found most of the assessment to be spot-on in regards to his behavioral tendencies, and the likely career choices were right in line with what I had suggested to him myself already. 

The first section of his report was titled “Description: Understanding Your Style.”  It said Hayden’s style is identified by the keyword “Motivator.”  It went on to explain what that means, the general characteristics, what factors motivate him, and a description of his ideal environment.  It gave a lengthy description of how he would handle various situations and environments and how changes can affect him.  I was really impressed here with how well this matched the Hayden that I know.

The next section was titled “Workplace: Your Professional Style.”  This section went on to describe how his traits might play out in workplace situations.  Some of the information provided here surprised me a bit, and I can imagine more of these habits and styles will play themselves out in the workplace as he matures. 

The third section was titled “Workplace: Tips for Your Professional Style.”  This section gave ideas for how to promote self-growth and enhance communication in the workplace.  It took each of his needs and tendencies in the workplace and countered them with ways he could improve his performance and functionality in the workplace by working with his traits to make sure they don’t work as negatives.

The next section was titled “Career Match: Best Match.”  This gave a listing of careers choices that Hayden is likely to find of significant interest.  These are the types of jobs that he might find fulfilling.  This list of careers really spanned the gambit, so I can’t say it helped narrow the field of possibilities all that much, but it did give us some categories to consider further.  I was not surprised to find that a primary or secondary teacher was on the list, as this is something I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while.  But I was surprised and somewhat excited to see that my own former profession was listed…a human resources specialist. 

Another subsection was titled “Career Match: Close Match.”  This was set up in the same way and with the same purpose as the previous section, only this list was based on a personality trait that he scored fairly high on, but it was not his primary trait.  On this list was Preschool Teacher, which is exactly what I’ve suggested many times over the last year that Hayden might consider.  His love for very young children and his special way for guiding them and keeping their interest, as well as his patience and attentiveness, all led me to think he might be well suited as a teacher of preschoolers.  I got a little bit of extra satisfaction in finding this on the list of close matches.   But again, this list was even longer than the “best match” list, and the possibilities really spanned the gambit, so I’m not sure it really helped narrow down the field that much.

The last section was titled “Scoring Data: Graph Page.”  This simply graphed how high he scored in each of the components of the DISC profile.  This gave me some idea of how strong each trait really was, but not much insight beyond that.

Overall, I found this profile pretty helpful.  While the career suggestions weren’t as narrow as I would have liked, the information on his workplace style, personality traits, and how all of that could play out in the workplace was really insightful and useful information.  I think that it could potentially help his guidance counselor to know and understand him better and perhaps guide him more purposefully as he prepares for college and/or the workplace.  I may even suggest that his charter school consider using this assessment with all of the students as they progress on their educational/career tracks.  There was a lot in this report about Hayden’s ability to function well on group projects and in leadership roles, and I’ve already seen a lot of that behavior play out since he started attending at the charter school (he was previously homeschooled for 10 years).  I would definitely recommend this assessment for anyone who is looking to find out more about themselves and how their personality and behavioral tendencies might affect their current or future role in the workplace.

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