Welcome to Aptitude Assessment! Please ensure you read each section carefully. Estimated time to completion are below.
Purpose and Inspiration (1 hour)
Spiritual Self-Reflection (1 hour)
Aptitude and Interest Tests (2 hours)
Certificate & Career Mapping (2 hours)
Local Job-Market Reality Check (1 hour)
Personal Development Plan (1 hour 30 minutes)
Total Estimated Time: 8 Hours
Entering a Tier 1 position is only the starting line of your professional journey. The real objective is to springboard you into a long-term career path that fits you—your God-given abilities, your interests, and the job market around you. Just as no two patriarchal blessings are identical, no single career path works for everyone. Some students thrive in roles that demand constant collaboration; others do their best work deep in data or code; still others light up when teaching and mentoring. This week’s module will guide you through several lenses—spiritual reflection, aptitude testing, labor-market research—to help you discover where your talents intersect with genuine employment demand in Africa. By the end you will have clearer insight into which BYU-Pathway certificate (and eventual degree) aligns with your strengths, along with an action plan to reach it.
Finding work is more than a cash decision; it is about serving God’s children with your unique abilities. Start by watching or reading Elder Jeffery A. Thompson’s devotional “What Is Your Calling in Life?”
Create a Google Drive folder for this module called Aptitude Assessment Tier 1 Module. Change the settings so everyone can view contents in the folder. In the folder, create a Google Doc titled “My Calling – Week 10 Reflection,” write ~200 words on how the talk reframes your view of a career.
Before you dive into aptitude tests or job-market data, you’ll spend this hour on a journey of spiritual self-reflection and discovery. Work is most satisfying when it channels the gifts God has already placed in you; those gifts may show up as spiritual gifts, natural talents, or recurring compliments from people who know you best. In this section you’ll gather evidence of your strengths from several sources, compile them in one place, and then translate each strength into a concrete way it could bless an employer or customer. The list you build here will guide every decision in the rest of the module.
To see your gifts clearly, look at your life from several angles and write down every strength that surfaces. Here are some possible sources and how to use them:
Patriarchal blessing (if you have one): Read prayerfully and highlight every talent, gift, or promise that points to work or service.
Scripture study: Review spiritual-gift passages—D&C 46:11-26, Moroni 10:8-18, Romans 12:4-8—and note gifts that resonate with you.
Trusted voices: Ask three people who know you well (family member, mentor, supervisor, classmate): “Which strengths or talents do you see in me that bless others?”
Personal Reflection: Skim past journals, school projects, callings, or achievements. Where did you feel joy and receive positive feedback?
From the sources above, create a list of at least 10 gifts or strengths—mixing spiritual gifts (e.g., discernment) with natural talents (e.g., working with numbers). Put the gifts or strengths in Column A of a Google Sheet. Make sure to create the Google Sheet in your Google Drive Aptitude Assessment Folder.
In column B, create a possible workplace expression of the gift. Here are some examples:
Gift / Talent Possible workplace expression
Discernment Prioritizing customer-support tickets; identifying root causes quickly
Compassion User-experience research; patient intake at a clinic
Organization Supply-chain coordination; event planning; maintaining CRM data
Language ability Translation/localization; cross-border sales outreach
Teaching Onboarding new hires; creating training videos
(Feel free to adapt or add your own examples.)
When you’re finished, save the Google Sheet—you will share only the gift list, not your patriarchal blessing or private notes.
Now that you have a more clear understanding of your personal gifts, talents, and skills it is time to learn more about how your talents and skills align with different careers or jobs. Research shows that people thrive when their daily tasks line up with their interests and natural abilities, so it is a blessing if we can find employment that matches our natural skills.
Click the links below to take the two free assessments. Be sure to take and save a screenshot from BOTH tests once you are completed. Be thoughtful and take your time with these assessments.
In your Google Drive Aptitude Assessment folder, create a Google Slides deck and make the title: "Week 10-Aptitude Results". Paste the screenshots of your top career clusters from both tests into the slide deck.
Take a look at the results from both of the assessments. Reflect on the questions below and put your thoughts in your slide deck from the previous section.
What are the similarities between the results from the two assessments?
What are the differences?
What do you think about the results and how they align with your gifts, talents, and skills?
Make note of any jobs or careers that appear on both lists.
In this section, we will continue to build on your work from the previous sections by exploring the certificate and career path options available to you through your education at BYU-Pathway. A BYU-Pathway certificate is your fastest route to job-ready skills, and it also counts towards your degree. Certificates can be stacked into employable degrees and get you on the path to meaningful employment. Please follow the steps below to begin your exploration and planning.
Visit the Introductory Certificates list on the BYU-Pathway Career Path site: Career Path
Click on each certificate and read the content about the certificate on the page.
Make note of what interests you and what doesn't.
Create a new Google Sheet in your Google Drive Aptitude Assessment folder and make the title "Week 10- Certificate and Career Path Mapping"
In the sheet, create a table with the following Column headers: | Certificate | Degree it feeds into | Skills it teaches | Interest-Fit (1–5) | Notes |. The sheet will have 5 columns (listed previously) and 14 rows (1 row for each of the 14 introductory certificates).
Fill in each column and row with the information on the page. In the Interest Fit column, indicate your level of interest in that certificate by giving it a rating of 1-5, with 1 being low interest and 5 being high interest. Please also include any notes or thoughts about the certificate in the Notes column.
Take a look at both your spiritual/natural gifts list, and your two career assessment results. Think about how the certificate paths fit in with both of those items.
Choose your top 3 certificates based on what you learned and your evaluation.
Tip: Early data show little hiring demand in Africa for Family History Research. Pick options with stronger demand (e.g., Project Management, Social Media Marketing, Technical Support Engineer).
Paste the BYU-Pathway links for your top three certificates into the sheet, under the table.
Let's continue to build on your work from the previous sections and do some research on your local job market. A job skill is only helpful when someone will pay you for it- where you actually live. This activity will give you a strong picture of the job market in your area and how your selected certificates line up with the job demand. Follow the steps below to begin.
Visit LinkedIn Jobs- https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/ and set the location to your country (or nearest economic hub).
For each of your three certificates, search two keywords from the course list associated with that certificate.
Example for Project Management: search "project coordinator" and "scrum"
In your Week 10- Certificate and Career Path Mapping Google sheet, record the 5 newest job postings per certificate. Please include job title, company name, company location, link, and skills needed.
Tip: If any certificate shows fewer than two postings, replace it with your fourth-choice certificate and repeat the steps above.
Please answer these questions on your Google sheet.
What did you learn from doing this activity?
What are the most in-demand jobs in your area?
How do they align with your current skillset and educational goals?
In this section, we will put everything together into a Personal Development Plan or PDP. Making a plan is often overlooked, but it is one of the most important steps we can take to making progress in life. Writing down concrete ideas and steps turns insights into action. Sometimes we have really vague ideas in our heads that we think are plans, but it is not until we write them down that they become more clear and actionable. Employers value a plan as much as they value enthusiasm or other skills. Follow the steps below to create your own PDP.
Chosen certificate path & rational (one paragraph)
Six-month action steps (courses to register for, people to network with, internships to pursue, etc.)
Three spiritual goals that support your career journey (e.g. daily prayer about your work, paying tithes on your first paycheck)
Go to the "Aptitude Assessment Tier 1 Module" folder in Google Drive that you created at the beginning of the module.
Move all documents that you have created from this module into the folder. There should be 4 of them total:
"My Calling" Reflection document (with skills list)
Week 10-Aptitude Results slides
Week 10- Certificate and Career Path Mapping Sheet (with LinkedIn evidence)
Completed PDP document
Make sure the folder is set to Anyone with the link> Viewer so that we can view your work
Submit the folder link in this week's self-evaluation.
You have reached the end of this module!