A job search or career switch can feel like navigating uncharted waters. Individuals often find themselves consumed by uncertainty and tend to solely focus on skills and experience while looking for their best-fit job or career. However, the key lies in our ability to understand our unique behavioral patterns, motivations, and stress responses that can simplify and improve our career decisions. This is where the Birkman Assessment stands out as a powerful tool that provides critical insights, helping individuals align their next professional move with their true, authentic self.
Understanding the Birkman Assessment
The Birkman Method is a personality, social, perception, and occupational interest assessment that measures a variety of behavioral styles, motivational factors, and stress triggers. Its powerful tools are designed to measure personality characteristics that influence behaviors, motivations, and perceptions.
Through detailed Birkman Reports, individuals are able to understand more about themselves, discover what makes them unique, and determine how this impacts them when they interact with peers and colleagues in the workplace. Other benefits that you can obtain through these reports include:
- Learning what interests you at work and at home.
- Discovering what behaviors others notice about you.
- Articulating your unique strengths and opportunities.
- Exploring your career interests with scientifically backed data.
The Birkman Color Key
Four colors are the foundation of The Birkman Method, identifying differences in people and helping individuals understand the many shades of their personalities. Here’s how the four Birkman colors describe different personalities:
Red: Known as the ‘Doers,’ Birkman Reds tend to make quick decisions, are practical, and prefer objective tasks.
Green: Birkman Greens are ‘Communicators.’ They enjoy working with people and are persuasive and competitive.
Yellow: They are known as the ‘Analyzers.’ Birkman Yellows like details and guidelines. They are also rule-oriented and prefer to schedule their activities.
Blue: Birkman Blues or the ‘Thinkers’ are innovative and creative people. They focus on long-term planning and enjoy looking for new ways to solve problems.
Your Birkman Map
The Birkman Map gives you an overview of who you are and where you fit in best in terms of your career preferences. The symbols on a map help us identify who an individual is in two key dimensions. A symbol placed within a color quadrant shows the degree to which the individual aligns with that quadrant. The horizontal axis represents the individual’s preference for dealing with tasks or people. The vertical axis classifies individuals as an extrovert or an introvert.
Interests: Represented by the ‘Asterisk’ symbol, this dimension explores what areas you are passionate about and where you gravitate in terms of activities that you enjoy.
Usual Behaviors: The ‘Diamond’ represents how you usually behave and interact with your environment. This dimension reveals your strengths, social interaction preferences, communication, and productive style.
Needs: Represented by the ‘Circle,’ needs are invisible and explain how we expect to be treated by people and our environment. Perhaps your needs include a high level of structure and consistency, or, on the other side, autonomy and flexibility.
Stress Behaviors: Stress -represented by the ‘Square,’ this dimension examines how you react to stressful situations when your underlying needs are unmet. With this information, you gain valuable self-awareness insights that can help you manage workplace challenges more effectively.
Leveraging Birkman Insights During Career Transition and Job Searches
Suggests Career Paths Based on Natural Interests
Birkman’s interest scales reveal your natural affinities for different types of work. These aren’t just skills that you have developed, but activities you genuinely enjoy doing. Using the diagram above, let’s assume that your assessment results reveal that you fall in the ‘red’ quadrant, but are fairly close to the ‘green’ quadrant too. Hence, this suggests that you enjoy a practical work approach and like to carry out tasks that involve working directly with people.
Identifies Your Work Environment Needs
Results from your Birkman assessment reveal the type of environment in which you will naturally excel. A person who needs structure and guidance to perform might struggle while working for a startup. Similarly, someone who prefers autonomy may feel stifled in a highly regimented corporate setting.
As an example, let’s assume that your Birkman Map reveals that, based on your needs, you fall in the ‘green’ quadrant. This shows that you tend to work well in environments that offer clear direction and guidance, and you are most comfortable when people around you are assertive and encourage competition.
Recognizes Your Stress Behaviors
As individuals, we react to workplace challenges and stressful circumstances in different ways. Job searches and career changes inherently involve uncertainty. Birkman’s stress behavior indicator can help you recognize your typical stress responses that may hinder your job search process, create strategies that will help manage and reduce stress, and identify environments that are likely to trigger stress behaviors. As a result, you become more self-aware and better able to steer clear of stressful situations.
Communicates Your Strengths Effectively
During interviews and networking conversations, articulating your strengths can be challenging. Birkman helps you clearly express your unique value proposition. For example, instead of using a generic statement like “I am a team player,” you can structure your statement to say, “Based on my Birkman Assessment result, I’m someone who thrives in collaborative environments;and your company’s cross-functional approach appeals to me significantly.
Career Success with Birkman
Authenticity and self-awareness are rewarded well in the job market. By leveraging Birkman insights into your job search or career transition phase, you enable yourself to make better decisions that align with your true professional self – thus allowing you to benefit from having more opportunities to find the right job and discover a career path where you can truly thrive.
Intrigued about how the Birkman Assessment can assist you with career success? Download a sample Birkman Report and talk with a Crosworks Career Coach about Career Assessment.