Reflecting on your own personal development, your ambitions and your future is a key part of recognising your potential. This is called Personal Development Planning (PDP). PDP is a structured and supported process to reflect upon your learning, performance and achievement in order to plan your personal, educational and career development. It's about analysing your skills, learning styles, aptitudes, interests and job expectations will provide clues to the type of career that might suit you.

This section will guide you through tests and exercises to get you to reflect upon your achievements and your ambitions.

Online Quizzes and Exercises

Profiling for Success - Online Assessments

Access instructions for University of Birmingham Students and Graduates

The Profiling for Success online self-assessment tools are available free of charge to University of Birmingham students, staff and graduates. These tools can help you in your personal and career development to understand more about:

Tests used for job selection and your test-taking skills
How your abilities relate to career choices
Your learning style and how you can become a more effective learner
Your preferences and how these relate to your personality strengths and possible areas for development
Your values

The following assessments are available:

Aptitude Tests – Verbal Reasoning, Numerical Reasoning, Abstract Reasoning
Learning Styles Indicator
Type Dynamics Indicator (Personality test)
Values-based Indicator of Motivation

Please note that you do not have to complete all the assessments, you can select whichever are appropriate to you. Click on the icon to access the tests.
If you have a disability (including dyslexia) and would find it difficult to access the assessments online, please advise us and we will arrange for you to do the assessments in an alternative format.

FEEDBACK AND DATA PROTECTION
We welcome your feedback on how you found the assessments. By registering to complete the assessments, you are agreeing to your name and email address being passed to the Careers and Employability Centre by My Potential. Your contact details will only be used for the purpose of contacting you for feedback and will not be used for any other purpose. My Potential will not send copies of your assessment reports to the Careers and Employability Centre.

Other resources you may use:

Personality tests

Take a ten minute online personality test developed by psychometric specialist Neil Scott of Cassin-Scott Associates. Results are based on the Holland model of vocational choice suggesting people with particular interests and styles tend to favour certain types of jobs.

About.com: What is your leadership style? Discover what kind of leader you are and what are your strengths and weaknesses when working with others.

• Psychometric tests in the Careerplayer will allow you to examine our values and see how they may affect your career choice.

• Inspire Leadership: Discover what kind of Leader you are. This quiz will help you understand what you value in work and what inspires you to take on responsibility. Make sure you print and keep a record of your results.

• Get2 Test: Evaluate your enterprising potential and character.

Learning styles

• The Vark Questionnaire has 16 questions and is a quick and easy way to help you assess your approach to learning.

• Soloman and Felder’s Index of Learning Styles can be completed online and helps you assess your preferences in four dimensions (active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, and sequential/global).

• The Honey and Mumford Learning Styles Questionnaire has been used for over 20 years to help people assess their learning style preferences and whether they are inclined towards activist, reflector, theorist or pragmatist. There is a £10 fee for this questionnaire.

Joy Hawthorn - You've got to know what's different about you - interview transcript

Nanjala Nyabola - Take chances - interview transcript

Am I creative?

Be enterprising

Becoming self-aware

Am I thinking critically?

What is leadership?

Social & interpersonal

Working in a team

Communicating

Ethical awareness

Cultural awareness

Planning and organisation

My analytical skills

ICT skills

Numeracy Skills

Commercial awareness