On the Road to Your Career Goals – Are You in the Driver’s Seat – and if so, which one?

We all have goals in our work, some of which may involve avoiding it altogether at times, especially on Monday mornings. Human resources professionals look into and consider personality traits when recruiting and hiring people for positions – but maybe they should be looking at our cars…

Apparently, the car you drive says a lot about you as a person. Or, another way of looking at it is; if you were a car, what type of car would you be? One of the many online tests that help determine this, as well as reveal a bit about you as a person is 7^th Mind’s Car Personality Test. Questions cover topics from handling life challenges and money to personal style and motto. (In case you were wondering, the car personality of the author is SUV – although I drive a sports car – hmmm…)

Another quiz on LovetoKnow.com states, “The car you drive says a lot about your personality. From the make and model to the state of the interior, your car reflects several aspects of your attitude, practicality, and the way you approach life.” Test highlights include assessments on one’s intelligence, lifestyle and habits such as fastidiousness and frugality.

Even the Wall Street Journal published an article, ‘What Your Car Says About You’ by Adam Bonislawski who writes, “The rich, it turns out, aren’t just “different from you and me,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. They’re also different from each other—especially when it comes to cars.” While this article focuses on high-end luxury cars in high-end zip codes, the data is pertinent to marketers and hiring professionals since, as the author explains, “Car choice correlates with hundreds of personal characteristics, including individual hobbies, political preferences, TV habits and emotional qualities, says Christopher Chaney, senior vice president of market-research firm Strategic Vision.”

In a twist on these results giving YOU an idea of what your choice in automobile says about you; here’s an article that tells you what OTHERS think about you based upon what you drive – with a humorous bent: ‘What Your Car Says About You’ by Thomas Bey.

And to boil it all down to what one characteristic, car color, says about your personality, psychology expert Kendra Cherry wrote, ‘What Does Your Car Color Say About Your Personality?’ where for example, a white car presents a fresh modern face to the world, black denotes power, and silver shows a sense of innovation and modernity – among colors highlighted.

So the next time you’re heading for that crucial interview, business meeting or house hunting appointment; keep in mind, that at least to some degree based upon the perspective of others, you are what you drive.