Free Personality Tests: Which Personality Test is Best?

Tibor Kučera, 23. 8. 2021

Your personality makes up all the characteristics about you that make you who you are. These characteristics—also known as personality traits—include your interests; the activities you enjoy doing; the way you think and behave; how you interact with other people; the things you like to learn about; and the places or environments you prefer to be in.

Deciding on the right career path has a lot to do with knowing yourself better—that is, understanding your own personality and how you would potentially enjoy and succeed in specific types of jobs and professions. One option how to do that is to try a personality test. But Which Personality Test is Best? There are many different tests designed to help you narrow down your personality type so that you can then discover career fields that would be the best fit for you. Below, we’re going to go over several different personality tests. We’ll discuss the pros, the cons, and which personality tests are the best choices to help you as you explore career choices (if you are looking for a recommendation for a specific apps, scroll to the bottom of the article).

The Big Five Personality Test

The Big Five Personality Test asks you questions that will determine whether you are “high,” “low,” or “in between” among five different dimensions of personality. These dimensions include:

Openness
Conscientiousness
Agreeableness
Extraversion
Neuroticism

According to researchers that examine personality, the Big Five is considered to be one of the best personality tests out there. This is because the dimensions give you a lot of information about who you are and the types of jobs you would do well in versus the jobs that might not fit with your unique traits. Overall, we give the Big Five a 10 out of 10. This test will give you very useful information about yourself and the career that could be right for you.

Holland’s RIASEC Test

Holland’s RIASC Test gives you excellent information on where you fall within six different categories of careers. The acronym RIASEC stands for:

Realistic
Investigative
Artistic
Social
Enterprising
Conventional

Can you guess which category you might fall under? You might have a good idea, but taking this personality test will point you in the right direction towards the types of professions and jobs that you’ll not only succeed in, but that you’ll also enjoy the most. We give Holland’s RIASEC a 9.5 out of 10 for being a great guide in helping you discover your personality.

The MBTI

The MBTI (short for Myers Briggs Type Indicator) is a test that shows you how you prefer to communicate and the way you interact with other people. It is definitely one of the most popular personality tests and a great first step for getting to know yourself or exploring relationships between people, but researchers are moving away from using MBTI. In the field of mental health, the MBTI is hardly ever used anymore and for good reason! The MBTI tends to put people in a certain “box,” which inevitably means that you lose a lot of information and accuracy on the degree of a given personality trait. Plus, your final score is kind of confusing because you get 4 personality traits (in order from your strongest trait to your least strongest trait), which come from the 16 different personality types identified by the MBTI. It can get a bit confusing with so many personality characteristics! For this reasons, plus the fact that the MBTI isn’t too helpful when it comes to exploring careers that are best for you, we give this test a 6 out of 10.

Theory of Multiple Intelligences

The Theory of Multiple Intelligences is based on the idea that people have different types of intelligence, including musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, visual-spatial, linguistic-verbal, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, and naturalistic. Although the idea of discovering the multiple intelligences that you might have is tempting, this test lacks any empirical evidence, does not have any scientific background, and is overall criticized by mainstream psychology. The theory of multiple intelligences is unfortunately still used, especially in education, probably due to fact that it is understandable and easy to use. However, you if want to get reliable information about yourself, we recommend you avoid tests based on this theory. For these reasons, we’ll rate this one a 3 out of 10.

Tip

If you are interested in getting to know you personality better and you are searching for a free personality test, try out Growmon – it combines both the Big Five personality test and RIASEC to give you valuable insights about your personality, strengths, interests, as well as areas of study that will fit best with your personality. Learn more and try it.