The author of the Ontology of Value® Test, Natalia, comments on her own experience with the test. She also reflects on the results.

What surprised her the most?  

Which results does she agree with?  

Which points does she disagree with?  

What did she learn about herself from this experience, and is she now more optimistic about her test, or rather, the opposite?  

Did she change her development plans or her career path now that she knows the truth about herself?

Introduction: The Long Process of Developing The Ontology Of Value Test.

For the past two years, I was working hard on the Ontology of Value Test. I first dived into Alfred Adler’s theory of human motivation. It was fascinating and enlightening to me; it greatly helped me in my personal development and inspired me to launch this project. Getting there involved plenty of trial and error, but it grounded how to interpret psychometric assessment results in real participant feedback rather than theory alone.

You can find more information on Alfred Adler’s theory and how to profit from it in our article “How Do We Build Value in the Job Market? Alfred Adler’s Theory and How You Can Profit From It“.

I spent over a year on intensive field research, attempting to dissect human motivation into orthogonal dimensions. It wasn’t easy— to say the least!

About a year ago, I began building the test. I developed an initial set of 140 questions representing key areas of professional life: working style, mindset, resilience to stress, interpersonal relations, and values and beliefs.

Several collaborators reviewed and revised the questions dozens of times before we launched the first round of the study in January 2021. The first cohort of subjects not only answered the questions but also left thousands of additional comments. 

I refined the set of questions and then worked on the model using machine learning routines programmed in Python, resulting in the final classification tool. You can explore this topic in our article “3 Steps To Find Your Edge in the Job Market: On The Ontology of Value Model“. 

We then launched the second round of the study to determine whether the test predictions align with the participants’ expectations. In the meantime, I completed writing the official test booklet.

There was so much material to cover that it totaled 260 pages of text! Material of that length is part of what makes psychometric assessment for professional development credible rather than a quick personality quiz dressed up as science. Since the feedback from the validating participants was overwhelmingly positive, we decided to release the test to the market in June 2021. Reaching that point was itself a test of how to measure career value alignment against a long list of personal assumptions built up over years. It also meant the final psychometric subscale analysis for career fit had been checked against real participant data rather than assumptions alone.

My Predictions and Expectations: Can a Career Development Software Help You Develop Better Career Development Strategies?

So, did I have any predictions for myself? Yes, of course! I always viewed myself as a creative, non-apologetic person who looks into the potential of projects and people rather than focusing on their face value.

I was also a researcher by training and skilled in decomposing complex projects into pieces and executing them. Lastly, I am sociable, I have a relational style of thinking, therefore, and I enjoy connecting people with each others. Therefore, my general prediction was that I might score high as a Creator, an Investor, a Specialist, and a Linchpin.

In terms of the working environments, I feel comfortable in entrepreneurship and freelancing. I don’t believe I would be equally comfortable living in a “system” such as corporations or public institutions. I was ambivalent about academia where I spent 8 years, but I felt that I left for a reason.

Namely, I didn’t fit this system as it didn’t offer the creative freedom that it promised. However, I spent so much time there that I probably learned all the mental schemes necessary to survive in academia.

So, that would be my prediction for this test.

What Was the Experience Like Going Through the Test?

I decided to approach this career test neutrally, treating it as if I were a impartial participant with no prior knowledge of the test. Although I wrote the questions, I didn’t recall all the parameters of the model; instead, I focused on providing genuine answers as a young professional named Natalia, representing myself.

I started early in the morning and smoothly completed all four parts of the test before breakfast. My total time was 1 hour and 40 minutes, which falls within the common range since most people take between 90 and 120 minutes to answer all the questions.

I didn’t find the questions particularly difficult. In a few instances, there were two close answers, making it take a while for me to choose a final option.

However, overall, I didn’t feel tired or emotionally drained after the test. Yes, I experienced some tension waiting for the final results. This was mainly because I was the author, and I cared about the results more than anyone else. That level of investment is a useful reminder that value-based archetypes for career planning mean more when the person applying them has also been tested by their own framework, and it’s exactly the kind of scrutiny a genuine career archetype framework for self-discovery should be able to withstand.