How Career-Adaptable Are You?
The four resources that carry people through job changes they did and did not choose
Careers no longer run on rails. Restructures, new technology, moves and plain boredom mean most people face several transitions, many of them unchosen. Career construction theory argues that what gets people through is not a perfect plan but four resources: looking ahead, owning the decisions, exploring options and believing you can learn what the next step needs. They were measured with the same scale in thirteen countries. This test shows which of the four you have in stock.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about your working life as it is now, whether you are employed, studying, between jobs or thinking about a change.
What it measures
The four adapt-abilities of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale: concern (thinking ahead about your working future), control (owning your career decisions), curiosity (exploring roles and possible selves) and confidence (believing you can solve the problems a career throws up). It is not about which job suits you, as career interest tests are, nor about how you make a single decision, as decision style tests are: it is about the resources you bring to any transition.
Based on: Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012)
Possible results
Concern
Looking ahead and preparing for what your working life could become.
Control
Owning your career decisions rather than leaving them to others or to chance.
Curiosity
Exploring other roles, fields and possible versions of your working self.
Confidence
Believing you can learn and solve whatever the next step demands.
Common questions
What is career adaptability?
It is the readiness and the resources to cope with changes in your working life - expected ones, like finishing your studies, and unexpected ones, like redundancy. Mark Savickas described it as a set of resources you can develop rather than a fixed trait. A meta-analysis found it relates to better adaptation results, such as career satisfaction and wellbeing, although those links are correlational.
Is this the same as a career interest test?
No. Interest tests tell you what kind of work might suit you; this one looks at how equipped you are to move between kinds of work. Two people with identical interests can differ hugely here - one plans, explores and tries, the other waits. The two are complementary: interests point to a direction, adaptability decides whether you get there when the path changes.
Can career adaptability be improved?
Yes - it was defined as a set of psychosocial resources precisely because they can grow, and career guidance often aims to build them. The practical levers are small: time set aside to think ahead, one career decision taken deliberately, conversations with people outside your field, and stretches at work that you can realistically complete.
Sources
- Savickas, M. L. (1997). Career adaptability: An integrative construct for life-span, life-space theory. The Career Development Quarterly. doi:10.1002/j.2161-0045.1997.tb00469.x
- Savickas, M. L., & Porfeli, E. J. (2012). Career Adapt-Abilities Scale: Construction, reliability, and measurement equivalence across 13 countries. Journal of Vocational Behavior. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2012.01.011
- Rudolph, C. W., Lavigne, K. N., & Zacher, H. (2017). Career adaptability: A meta-analysis of relationships with measures of adaptivity, adapting responses, and adaptation results. Journal of Vocational Behavior. doi:10.1016/j.jvb.2016.09.002
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording, adapted from the published Career Adapt-Abilities Scale, so scores cannot be compared with its norms. The scale was built and tested across thirteen countries, but making a scale mean exactly the same thing in every language and culture is genuinely hard, so treat any comparison between countries with caution. Adaptability is also shaped by circumstances: money, caring duties, discrimination and the local job market limit what anyone can do, and a low score may reflect those rather than you.