Welcome to CareerTest by Universum, a sub-brand of Universum Communications Sweden AB the most-recognized employer branding and talent insights specialist in the world.
Drawing on over 30 years of Universum's experience, CareerTest is a trusted companion for your career path, bridging the gap between you, your education provider, and future employers.
Our goal is to help you:
Decide what type of workplace or employer fits you
Prepare for job search and future career
Navigate your current and future work-life
Your career profile
CareerTest aims to guide you across a spectrum of decision processes in your work life and professional development by providing you with:
- Alignment with one of our 5 Career Types with relevant and contextual advice
- Local comparison of salary expectations (or, if available, actual salaries)
- Employer recommendations derived from your Career Type, based on regional or global lists
In addition, CareerTest also provides services and offers depending on region and seasonality, such as:
- Career advice and free or substantially discounted services from third-party providers.
- Competitions for gift vouchers
How the CareerTest works
The CareerTest is aimed to help you reflect on and understand your preferences towards employers and the workplace and to offer guidance along the way. We understand that sharing your preferences and expectations about the working world is a big step. That's why we're honored that every year, over a million people trust us with their responses.
We currently offer the CareerTest annually to a limited number of countries and demographic profiles. Our goal is to generate world-class insights about the working world and to be able to offer our core services to as many career seekers as possible.
We ask for demographic information to present you with the most relevant information in your career profile. It also allows us to draw conclusions about different population segments. This data is aggregated and is not linked to personal identities.
In certain locations, we may ask you to share your opinions and preferences regarding your higher education institution. We collaborate with these organizations and share these insights to help them improve their career services and student offerings.
Along with your career profile, you'll also receive a monthly newsletter of curated career-related content. Additionally, you can follow us on our social media channels for more regular updates.
The CareerTest team
The team behind CareerTest by Universum is as diverse as the people who take the test every day. We hail from several countries around the globe and work from Stockholm, Paris, Kyiv, and Catania.
The 5 Career Types
Have you ever wondered what your ideal work environment would look like? Or what kind of employer you want to work for? With the CareerTest, you can discover your Career Type: a unique combination of your preferences towards work conditions, employer offerings, personality traits, and workplace preferences.
The 5 Career Types are based on information from career-interested individuals gathered over the last 30 years. Our team of analysts has evaluated these data points to create aggregations of career seekers' attitudes and preferences, to deliver more accurate results for CareerTest users, and to provide insights to higher education institutions and employers.
Your Career Type is more than just a personality type - it expresses your needs and wishes in a work context and offers insight into the path you'd like to take in your career. It's not a one-size-fits-all solution, but a valuable tool for understanding yourself and navigating the world of work.
It's important to note that the CareerTest is not a psychometrically-derived personality test. Instead, it focuses on your preferences in the workplace and your relationship with employers.
At CareerTest, we believe that every workplace benefits from having a diverse range of Career Types, and that employers should create work environments that are welcoming and accommodating to all. While we don't offer to make career decisions for you, we do hope to support you in charting your path and making informed decisions about your future.
The methodology
To derive the Career Types, our analysts conducted cluster analyses that included:
- CareerTest users' employer preferences, using a multiple-choice questionnaire of 40 attributes that research has shown to determine an employer's attractiveness.
- CareerTest users' personality styles, using Likert-scaled questions that cover fundamental personality styles.
- CareerTest users' preferences for the organizational structure of their ideal workplace, using binary-choice questions.
By running multiple clustering algorithms on this data, our analysts found that 5 distinct Career Types with diverging patterns of preferences consistently present themselves across the globe, regardless of their background or identity. Our team of analysts, together with experts in career counseling, higher education, and employment, further examined the insights and named these 5 Career Types:
- Go-Getters, defined by their drive for high performance.
- Ground-Breakers, defined by their drive for creative innovation.
- Change-Makers, defined by their drive to work towards a greater good.
- Balance-Seekers, defined by their drive for security and flexible work conditions.
- Globe-Trotters, defined by their drive to work in a vibrant international environment.
Our analyses are conducted with the highest level of care and respect for the users who trust us with their information. Despite this, it is important to note that the results may not perfectly capture the experiences of every individual. Some users may not feel that any of the Career Types fit them, while others may feel that multiple types fit them. This is an inherent limitation of typology when complex circumstances are simplified. Nevertheless, we hope that by breaking down these complex patterns of attitudes and preferences, most users will find themselves reflected in one of the Career Types, providing them with valuable guidance for their career paths.
How the salary comparison works
CareerTest's salary comparison feature offers users a means to compare their salary expectations or current salaries with similar demographic groups, and those who share the same Career Type.
During the CareerTest we ask students about their expected salary for their first job, professionals about their current salary, and unemployed individuals about their last salary.
We use these data to present average salaries based on Career Type, field of study, and gender. These categories were chosen as they significantly affect salary expectations and provide us with a sufficient sample size to present results to most of our users.
Our goal is to help career seekers gain a better understanding of market salaries, which can inform their salary expectations and aid in successful salary negotiations with employers.
Please note that there are limitations to this salary comparison tool. Firstly, as the data is an average of diverse information, it may not accurately stand for the wide distribution of salaries and salary expectations. Sub-fields within a field of study have significant differences in salary expectations, which are not reflected in our comparison. Secondly, as the data was collected over an extended period, salaries and salary expectations may be influenced by trends such as inflation and may at times result in a flawed comparison. However, we believe that this information still holds value and can be used in the context of wider research on optimal salaries.
How the employer recommendations work
CareerTest's employer recommendations are based on feedback from our users. We use this information to identify which employers are perceived to offer what each Career Type is looking for, giving our users a sense of which organizations and companies align with their Career Type.
Through our CareerTest, we ask users to evaluate the image of their ideal employers based on a range of attributes. This information helps us create a profile for each employer and match it with the needs of each Career Type, resulting in a match score. The top 10 employers that are the best fit for each Career Type are then recommended to the user. Please note that while we strive to offer a comprehensive list of recommended employers, there are limitations to this approach.
To ensure we have enough data per employer and to keep the list manageable, we focus on the largest and most relevant employers in each country. This means that smaller employers or public service organizations that may interest some users may not be included. However, we believe that these recommended employers can still serve as a guide and that they may be interpreted as representative of similar organizations that align with each Career Type.
Contact us
We hope that you found the information you were looking for. If you have more questions or feedback about CareerTest, don't hesitate to contact us at support@careertest.universumglobal.com