Job Search Attitude Inventory

When it comes to finding a job, attitude is everything. Most job coaches and counselors would agree that a person’s mindset and motivation when looking for a job are the keys to finding one quickly. The Job Search Attitude Inventory (JSAI) helps individuals identify their attitudes about looking for a job and then offers suggestions for becoming more active and self-directed in the job search.

The Job Search Attitude Inventory (JSAI) is a career counseling and vocational guidance tool designed to pinpoint an individual’s mindset, motivation, and psychological barriers regarding the employment search process. Rather than a pass/fail pre-employment screening test, this assessment features 40 statements where individuals indicate whether they agree or disagree with various job-seeking outlooks. Taking under 30 minutes to complete, it can be administered online or as a self-contained, self-scoring paper workbook to score individuals across five core behavioral dimensions.

What It’s Best Used For

• Breaking down mental job-hunt barriers: Identifying sub-conscious, negative, or defeatist attitudes that stop job seekers from actively pursuing new opportunities.
• Guiding vocational and career counseling: Helping coaches, career centers, and employment counselors structure meaningful advice sessions based on a client’s personalized profile.
• Measuring self-directed planning traits: Evaluating where an individual falls across four original core areas: Luck vs. Planning, Uninvolved vs. Involved, Help from Others vs. Self-Help, and Passive vs. Active.
• Assessing motivational resilience: Using the updated fifth scale (Optimistic vs. Pessimistic) to measure an individual’s outlook and emotional endurance during extended periods of unemployment.
• Promoting active job exploration: Offering practical, built-in action strategies and tips directly to the user to help them take independent charge of their career search.

The JSAI asks job seekers whether they agree or disagree with 40 statements about the job search process. Users then profile their scores in five categories:

• luck vs. planning
• uninvolved vs. involved
• help from others vs. self-help
• passive vs. active
• optimistic vs. pessimistic (new)

The assessment helps them to identify mental and attitudinal barriers that might be keeping them from finding work and discover strategies for improving their attitudes and re-energizing their job searches.

This edition adds a fifth scale (optimistic vs. pessimistic) and includes revised items and instructions and additional tips for improving one’s outlook and increasing one’s job search success.

Self-scoring, self-interpreting, consumable, no other components needed.