By JANE HODGES

April 22, 2010 — With the country’s unemployment hovering around 10%, many professionals are on the hunt for the perfect job. But what job? What industry? To the rescue are online career-assessment tests that aim to help workers (and daydreamers) identify suitable jobs and work environments. We took four tests to learn what fields are a good fit for a longtime reporter: the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Kolbe A Index, the Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potential (MAPP) test, and a service called Careerkey.

 

All of the tests used questionnaires that took less than 30 minutes to complete and asked us to rank or qualify our preferences for different types of activities, approaches to activities or responses to situations or ideas. Then, we received results. Both Kolbe and Myers Briggs presented four axes of behavior, with our particular work preferences and skills noted on them. Careerkey ranked our strengths in six topic areas, and MAPP provided a narrative report and jobs list.

First, we took the Kolbe A Index, a test from Phoenix, Ariz.-based Kolbe Corp. About 50,000 consumers use the assessments online annually, and the company has 5,000 corporate clients, according to CEO David Kolbe. The index identifies people’s natural instincts (or “conative” skills), so they can choose environments and situations where their instinctual style thrives. We paid an extra $14 for a “Career MO+” assessment to get more targeted information on our professional options based on our responses.

The resulting 17-page report showed where we fit on a scale of one to 10 within four “action modes”—fact finder, follow through, quick start, implementor. It revealed that we’re mainly motivated by our fact-finder and quick-start traits, which means we’re able to “specify” and “improvise.” In work situations we need breadth and variety, but also the ability to use detail and research. We snickered at the test’s accurate observation that we avoid mechanical tasks and repairs. We need the challenge of a full plate but must manage time by priority-setting.

The accompanying 12-page Career MO+ materials—full of details on professions where those like us thrive—were helpful, and even explained how we can market our strengths. The analysis of why certain jobs fit our personality helped us see why we like some work (fast-paced, loosely managed, autonomously produced) and not others (too many supervisors/meetings, unclear project mandates, narrow scope).

The Myers Briggs Type Indicator test borrows from Jungian psychology and posits that people’s personalities fit one of 16 types, determined by four polarities, including introversion/extroversion, intuiting/sensing and thinking/feeling. Two people with the same Myers Briggs type can still be quite different, since they may fall in different zones even within the same ends of these four scales.

This was the only assessment test for which we arranged a live consultation. After taking the test online, we waited to hear results during our phone meeting with a counselor trained by Gainesville, Fla.-based Center for Applications of Psychological Type (CAPT), a non-profit organization founded in 1975 that trains counselors to administer the Myers Briggs test and other assessment tests. Lisa Orr, director of operations at CAPT, told us that its test is administered about a million times annually, but couldn’t say how many consultations were conducted by CAPT-trained counselors.

During our consultation, which CAPT had to push back a day, we learned some useful tidbits. We straddled the border in some categories—we’re situational extroverts, but sort of introverts by nature, for instance. The chat was helpful because rather than route us toward researching certain jobs or careers, we were able to discuss what sorts of projects within our field did and didn’t suit us and how to think about the changing landscape in our profession. The counselor confirmed that our current strategy—tolerate unsettling changes going on by focusing on a single big project—could work for our personality type and help us to adjust.

The MAPP, administered by the Edina, Minn.-based International Assessment Network, presented questionnaire results in a long narrative, explaining how we interact with nine work-related faculties. The report’s assessments seemed to fit us, such as our motivations (we don’t require recognition, can work in foreground or background), our aptitudes (OK at math; highly verbal), reasoning style (big picture) and so forth. It also offered a list of 20 likely job fits (including our current and former positions), as well as links to a job database where we could sync test results to different jobs and see how well they would suit us based on a variety of criteria. This test seemed to classify us as more of the “loose artist” personality, who doesn’t like deadlines or structure and is highly intuitive, which isn’t how we view ourselves. But other observations, like our current and possible future career choices, were on-target.

We found the results from Careerkey’s survey the most general. Based on our answers, the site assigned numbers to our strength levels across six areas—realistic, social, investigative, enterprising, artistic, and conventional. It then provided links to careers associated with these areas, noting that we’d be happiest in jobs reflective of our high-score categories, which for us were “artistic” and “social.” (Scarily, for us anyway, we ranked low on “investigative” and “realistic.”)

When we looked at job categories within each of these areas, we were presented with a broad array of choices. We felt this site might be best for a younger person feeling their way toward a major or first career, versus a person looking for personality assessments of the MBTI or Kolbe sort.

Juliet Jones, the company’s vice president, says the Careerkey test has been used by about 24 million people since 1997. Ms. Jones notes the test may be most useful to career changers rather than those seeking to get more fulfillment in an existing field.

The takeaway? While we appear to be a good match for our chosen field, the tests offered insights on what types of assignments best fit our skills. And there were no big surprises—none of the test results suggested we pursue a career as a rodeo clown.

COMPANY	PRICE	CAREER ASSESSMENT FINDINGS	COMMENT
Kolbe Corp.www.kolbe.com	$63.95 for Kolbe A Index plus Career MO+ assessment	Our dominant two traits among four are ‘fact finder’ and ‘quick starter,’ and we have a decided distaste for the mechanical or for modeling outcomes. We do lots of research and then leap.	The test results jibed with our sense of self—liking depth, variety and speed and working with ideas; assessment of how we respond to jobs and can market our strengths was worth the cost.
Myers Briggs Type Indicatorwww.capt.org	$165 for online assessment, one hour phone appointment and reading materials	Some people who take the test wind up on the cusp of two types. For instance, we were borderline extrovert/introvert and borderline perceiving/judging but had clear-cut intuitive and thinking traits.	The third-party test administrator pushed back appointment 24 hours. Consultation was useful, and counselor was able to review our near-term work strategy and affirm ways to manage professional uncertainties.
Careerkeywww.careerkey.org	$9.95 for online quiz and assessment	Our dominant traits among six are social and artistic. We scored lower on realistic, investigative, conventional, enterprising traits—slightly disturbing considering our current career.	Test results were very broad. This seems like a nice, low-cost start for younger users, who might be choosing between fields of study or various professions.
Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potentialwww.assessment.com	$19.99 for test, list of 20 likely professional fits, narrative about our results	List offered predictable job titles related to media, teaching and counseling positions, but the narrative about how we respond and use different faculties at work was helpful—even funny.	Service provided option to pull a detailed analysis of how likely we would be to enjoy up to 10 professions of our choice with data on why. More detailed analysis was available for higher prices.

By JANE HODGES

Talk about control. In addition to managing themselves, self-employed workers have their own options for retirement saving, too. Two of the best options: solo 401(k)s and solo Roth 401(k)s.

Both have been around a few years but are more common now as accountants with entrepreneurial clients have become more fluent with them, says Rick Meigs, president of Portland, Ore.-based 401khelpcenter.com, a 401(k) research firm.

Their biggest benefit is they often allow for higher retirement-savings contributions than other plans. They also have less-complicated contribution rules than a Keogh, which offers high contribution potential but may require the expense of an actuary and extra paperwork.

Salt Away

Solo 401(k)s let you put away more than a Simple IRA, which allows a maximum contribution of $11,500 a year for those under 50 and $14,000 for those older, plus up to 3% of income (after adjusting for self-employment tax). More than Roth IRAs, too, which set a ceiling of $5,000 for those 49 and under, and $6,000 for those older. Unlike a Roth IRA, solo 401(k) plans also place no income limits on who can participate.

Regular solo and Roth solo 401(k)s also can allow for higher contributions than a Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) IRA at the same income level. In a SEP IRA for 2009 and 2010, entrepreneurs may contribute as much as 20% of their net business profit (up to a maximum of $49,000) if they are sole proprietors, or 25% of their salary if their company is a corporation. (Net business profit is defined as the income of the business after expenses, and minus half of the self-employment tax.)

But with a solo 401(k) or solo Roth 401(k), for 2009 and 2010 you can put into the plan 100% of your first $16,500 in income from the business (or $22,000, if 50 or older), plus 20% of net profit, until you max out contributions at $49,000 (or $54,500, if you are 50 or older).

How can an entrepreneur sock away more with a solo 401(k) than with a SEP IRA? Clint Gharib, director of managed products and insurance at J.P. Turner & Co. in Atlanta, uses the example of a 51-year-old sole proprietor whose business income was $100,000. If the proprietor used a SEP IRA, he or she could invest only 20% of $92,936 ($100,000 minus $7,064, half the self-employment tax), or about $18,600.

Numerous mutual-fund, brokerage and discount-brokerage firms offer solo 401(k) plans. Among fund families that sell them through financial advisers: Invesco Aim, Pioneer Investments and OppenheimerFunds. Self-directed investors can open such plans at T. Rowe Price Group, Charles Schwab Corp., Fidelity Investments and Vanguard Group. The Roth versions are also available from fund companies and securities firms such as Invesco Aim, Pioneer, T. Rowe Price, Vanguard, ING Direct’s ShareBuilder unit and E*Trade Financial Corp.

Fees vary, and can include a setup fee, annual administration fee, and routine mutual-fund fees—in addition to adviser fees. The highest fees are for those solo 401(k)s sold through insurance companies, Mr. Meigs says.

Among adviser-sold plans, Pioneer charges no setup fee but has a $25 annual fee that is waived on accounts over $25,000. Invesco Aim charges no setup fee and offers two administration options: a self-service option with a $10 annual fee or a full-service option, in which advisers choose a third-party administrator that aids with plan compliance. Fees for the latter vary but average less than $100 per year.

OppenheimerFunds charges no setup fee and annual administration fees of $10 for accounts over $50,000, and $15 for accounts under $50,000.

ShareBuilder’s solo 401(k) products cost $195 to set up, and are assessed a $15 monthly fee, waived on accounts over $250,000; start-up costs are $125 for Costco members.

Russell Lowry, a certified financial planner with Sagemark Consulting Private Wealth Services in Windsor, Conn., says he has opened plans for clients at Plan Administrators Inc., a third-party administrator in De Pere, Wis., which offers adviser-sold plans featuring funds from companies such as American Funds and OppenheimerFunds. At Plan Administrators, setup costs $50, and annual fees are $150 (for balances below $250,000) or $250 (for balances $250,000 and above). Mr. Lowry also charges a fee on the plans; he says it’s about 1.5% of assets annually, or less as balances rise.

Solo 401(k)s do in some cases have higher administration fees than SEP IRAs or other plans. Investors need to weigh whether they save aggressively enough to justify those fees. Another detail: With solo 401(k) plans, once accounts hit $250,000, investors are required to file annual paperwork on them to the Internal Revenue Service.

Richard Reyes, a certified financial planner in Orlando, Fla., says to help his clients decide which plan is right for them, he asks them: “How much money are you going to put away yourself? If he/she tells me less than $10,000 to $15,000, then I will always lean toward the SEP and Simple arena. If the owner says a lot more, then one is almost automatically thrown into the solo 401(k) arena.”

Mr. Reyes advises that when an investor can reliably contribute at least $15,000 a year, solo 401(k) plans often make more sense than SEP IRAs.

Other Considerations

Investing benefits aside, the ability to borrow is a plus, too. The decision also involves age considerations and guesswork about future tax rules. Investors or their advisers must figure whether it’s wiser to contribute after-tax now–to a Roth IRA or Roth 401(k)–or reduce taxable income now and pay tax on retirement income later–with a SEP IRA or solo 401(k).

Mr. Lowry, the financial planner, says that for entrepreneurs under 40 who want to maximize their retirement investment, he generally recommends a solo Roth 401(k) because of likely future tax increases.

The bottom line? As more workers start businesses, work as contractors or opt for self-employment, higher earners should strongly consider a solo 401(k). Even among adviser-sold plans, it’s possible to find reasonably priced options.

—Ms. Hodges is a writer in Seattle. She can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

The Seattle Times

Jan. 24, 2010 — Jacqui Evanchik, a 53-year-old software consultant, knew when she listed her one-bedroom condo at Capitol Hill’s Trace Lofts that she’d chosen to do so in a difficult market. Home sales have been anemic for a while.

By JANE HODGES

When Jennifer Worick, a 41-year-old Seattle social-media consultant and author, began window shopping for a new apartment in July, she had an ambitious wish list: She wanted a place bigger than her 650-square-foot Wallingford studio, she wanted to live in a walk-friendly neighborhood near public transportation and she wanted to lower her $1,050 monthly rent.
Typically, moving into a better apartment and paying less for it is improbable. But these aren’t usual times for the Puget Sound apartment market.

Jennifer Worick, a crafts writer and social-media consultant, is a renter who moved from a 650-square-foot apartment to this larger apartment recently to take advantage of a better rent deal.

Mike Scott, of Dupre + Scott Apartment Advisors, says that landlords are facing the worst market they’ve seen in three decades. Excessive new condo inventory, job losses and home prices falling to levels comparable to rent have pushed the Puget Sound vacancy rate to 7.2 percent, up from 4.8 percent a year ago, according to Dupre + Scott data.
And rents that fell 4 percent during the 12 months through September to an average of $959 per month are expected to fall another 8 percent during 2010 and another 1 percent in 2011 before slowly turning around.
For renters, falling housing costs are one rare perk in a tough economy. Concessions such as a month of rent free or free parking have also become commonplace. It’s not surprising then that the 1,000-square-foot Ballard apartment Worick began leasing Nov. 1 costs her less than her former studio.
Not only that, but the owner-landlords were flexible: They agreed to waive a pet deposit, stagger move-in payments, and even offered to let Worick pick the apartment’s next paint colors rather than just applying a standard shade of contractor white to the new tenant’s walls.
With high unemployment and unsold condos and single-family homes that unintentionally became rentals, landlords face competition for their abundant apartment supply. Some 59 percent of all apartment buildings are offering concessions, according to Dupre + Scott. Typically, concessions include free or reduced rent for one or more months in exchange for committing to a one-year lease. The pricier the apartment, the fatter the concessions, perhaps not surprising given that apartment units priced at $1,800 or more per month currently have vacancy in excess of 20 percent.
Renters are noticing the change. Worick said that the market seems softer than it was the last time she moved four years ago.
“It seems like there were a lot of vacancies,” Worick says of her recent apartment hunt. “Landlords were getting creative.”
When she moved out of her Wallingford building, management asked her if she wanted to talk about her rent. (She didn’t; they’d raised it four times between 2005 and 2009.) Many of the larger buildings Worick researched were hawking one month free with a 12-month lease. Some offered discounts on the first month’s rent to cushion the price of deposits and other move-in expenses.
She’s not the only renter to notice deals.
Corey Koniniec, a 27-year-old freelance cinematographer, recently returned to Seattle after six months away and is apartment hunting with his girlfriend. The duo have budgeted $1,300 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, ideally in a contemporary building that offers covered parking and is located close to the I-90 corridor. They’re looking in West Seattle, Bellevue and points in between. They’ve also posted their wants online.
“Things have changed a lot. People are really willing to negotiate,” he says. “There’s definitely something out there for us.”
Koniniec says he’s seen apartments that cost $1,850 earlier this year advertise rents of $1,350. He’s also received numerous rental offers from his online “housing wanted” posting, some from investors seeking renters for failed home flips and some from resourceful landlords.
“Owners have been quick to adjust their rents to try and maintain occupancy levels,” says Tom Daniels, executive vice president at Riverstone Residential Group, which manages 17,000 apartment units in the Northwest.
Daniels confirms that among Riverstone units in the Northwest, many located in high-rise buildings, rents have fallen about 8 percent in the past year. Concessions almost always come in the form of free months of rent, he says.
“Renters seem to want that cash discount,” he says.
The difficult market, he says, is likely to linger although in the past two months downtown buildings in Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond are starting to show improvement. Aside from flexibility on rent price, he says, many building owners and property-management companies are starting to forgive poor credit on lease applications if the cause of low scores is a home foreclosure, versus other causes, such as poor credit-card management.
One last factor threatens to keep the apartment market soft for at least the next few quarters — and that is this: It’s now cheaper to own a condo than to rent a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in King County, Pierce County, and Kitsap County. In Snohomish County, owning costs about $100 more, while in Thurston County it costs about $60 more.
While home-price appreciation is less sure than it has been in the past, the extended first-time buyer $8,000 tax credit and low monthly payments may turn fence-sitters into owners.
Scott and apartment managers think that owning won’t be cheaper than renting for long, though, especially if the housing market bottoms out in the next year or two. Rob Kellum, COO of Suhrco Residential Properties, which manages 6,000 apartments and 8,000 condo units in the Puget Sound region, says renters are deciding to end leases and become homeowners. Kellum says that his company and the building owners for whom it manages apartments review prices frequently — and, in some cases, adjust them if an applicant makes a verifiable claim that a rival or nearby building offers better concessions.

Copyright © The Seattle Times Company

When you work from home you help keep cars off the road, but you also likely increase your utility bills.

With roughly 34 million telecommuting adults in America—a number slated to double by 2016, according to Forrester Research—adjustments to your home office power consumption, lighting, and heating and cooling can impact the environment and your wallet—up to about $200 per year in energy costs.

Down-shift your power consumption

1. Activate power-management settings. Home office electronics have multiple power modes: active (or “on”), active standby (“on” but consuming less than 100% power), and passive standby (or “off”), according to the nonprofit American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, which promotes energy efficiency to consumers and government policy makers.

You can instruct your computer to move into lower-consumption modes automatically when you’ve stopped using it temporarily—during a lunch hour or phone call, for instance—yet also wake up when you’re ready to resume working. Such tactics can reduce your computer-related electricity costs by $25 to $75 per machine annually, says Energy Star.

Energy Star-rated power management features are available on Macintosh and Windows platforms (XP, Vista, 2000). Energy Star offers tips for how to adjust settings on different platforms.

This is a four-story package I wrote for BNET, a business strategy site from CNET.com that is now CBS-owned. The focus was on service and actionable information for business-minded readers.

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According to a recent survey by Gensler, the prominent corporate architecture firm, half of all employees say they would work an extra hour per day if they had a better workplace. So why do so many companies maintain dark, cramped, ugly, or poorly designed offices?

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I contributed several stories to this feature package about ways companies can conserve cash and avoid failure in the current difficult economy — from refinancing debt to prioritizing vendors, from non-core divestitures to using credit revolvers creatively.

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