In This Chapter

Aptitude assessment tests are a helpful way of examining your interests and strengths, and then comparing your profile to the characteristics of various career options. There’s no specific mortgage broker career test. I can’t offer an exam that will tell you with certainty that this is the right career for you. But in this chapter, I’ve asked Alan B. Bernstein, a psychotherapist who specializes in career development and career choice, and the author of Guide to Your Career: How to Turn Your Interests into a Career You Love (Princeton Review Series, Random House 5th Edition) and Power Retirement (McGraw-Hill, 2006), to provide a brief assessment test that can give you insight into whether a mortgage broker career should be considered given your interests and style.

In his practice, Bernstein uses The Birkman Method, an effective technique endowed by The National Foundation for Science, which has been in existence for over 50 years. But this personality assessment is a greatly condensed version of the full Birkman Method questionnaire. It is not intended to be specific and may not be completely accurate for everyone.

For a specific, reliable, and comprehensive measurement of interests, natural behavior styles, underlying needs, motivations, and stress behaviors, you may want to complete the 298-item questionnaire for The Birkman Method^®. Contact: salesgroup@ birkman.com for more information. You can also contact Alan B. Bernstein at www.guidetoyourcareer.com.

After 15 years in the business, I’ve developed my own profile of who will be both successful and satisfied in this career. I’ve found you’ve got to enjoy what you do to do it well.

When hiring a new mortgage broker for my company, I’m looking for someone who:

A significant part of your job as a mortgage broker is being a salesman. But it’s not like selling a car. In this case, the product is your expertise at reading people, understanding the market, and being able to find the right loan product for each client. You have to be able to sell yourself in order to make a connection with a potential client. But you need the other characteristics I’ve listed in order to do your job well. Test yourself and see if this is the right career for you.

Bernstein has developed this version of the Birkman Profile as a simple way to visualize your overall behavior. The following questions are a condensed and self-scored version of The Birkman Method created especially for this book. The questions presented here enable you to apply this method to clarify both your interests (symbolized by “I”) and your style (symbolized by “S”). This will be a major asset in defining not only what you are drawn to, but also how you like to achieve.

The Birkman Interest and Style Summary plots aspects of your personality and behavior on a grid with four quadrants, each identified by a color.

The Lifestyle Grid is based on a model of how people behave in general, and this particular model has been used for thousands of years. The first person to use it was probably Hippocrates, the “father of medicine.” Hippocrates claimed that he could take all the people in the world, divide them into four categories, and accurately describe how they would act or behave. Sometimes the Grid is called the “Hippocratic Model.” According to Hippocrates, there are four basic temperaments. He describes people as Implementers, Communicators, Planners, and Administrators, and bases his model on this idea. Models or pictures are not perfect; they are only generalizations. This one, however, is a very good generalization of how most people behave most of the time.

There are two aspects of your personality and behavior.

An “I” indicates your interests, what you want to do, as indicated by your interest patterns. It shows the type of results you want and the kind of activities that will give you the most satisfaction. This does not measure skill or ability around those interests, only preference. The color location of your “I” suggests what you like to do.

An “S” indicates your style, how you like to do things, for pursuing your interests. This is your preferred mode of achieving your personal goals. It is how people see you acting most of the time. It is how you do things when everything is going your way. If your style color results don’t match your real-life style, consider whether you are operating under stress on a day-to-day basis, and remember that when considering your score.

After you take the following Birkman Career Style Summary, use the grid below to place your interest symbol (I) and your style symbol (S).

In order to develop an estimate of your “Birkman Colors” for your interests and style, you will need to complete and self-score the following items. To do this, read each pair of phrases and decide which side of the pair is most descriptive of you, then put a check mark by that phrase.

Now that you have made your choices, you can score them to determine the “color” of your interests and style. To accomplish this, you will need to count the number of items you marked in Column B and enter these counts in the four spaces below.

Now that you have these four counts, estimate your Interest and Style Colors. To do this for Interest, simply read the following four statements and see which one describes your counts for Interest. The color associated with the statement that is correct for your counts is the best estimate of your Interest Color you can make from this exercise.

Now place an “I,” indicating your interest, in the appropriate color square of the blank grid.

To estimate your Style Color, simply read the following four statements and see which one describes your counts for Style. The color associated with the statement that is correct for your counts is the best estimate of your Style Color that you can make from this exercise.

Now place an “S,” indicating your Style Color, in the appropriate quadrant of the grid.

Now that you have a color for Interest and a color for Style, what do they mean?

Birkman organizes the “I” symbol, occupational interests, as follows:

When considering which career or profession you are drawn to, you want to find one that contains aspects of the interests you are likely to use. If your occupational interest is green, you will feel comfortable in a career like a mortgage broker where you are required to promote or persuade. If your occupational interest is yellow, you will feel comfortable with the detail work, technology demands, and numbers component of being a mortgage broker. An occupational interest of red, with a strong interest in working with people, would also be compatible with being a mortgage broker.

Your Style Color: your style symbol (S) describes how others might describe you. It shows how you like to act, indicating your active behavior. Knowing the style in which you tend to pursue your interests is the first step toward describing the way in which you would like to pursue your interests. Your Style Color adds extra insight into your career choice. It’s not uncommon for your Interest and Style colors to be different. A person may like the types of job responsibilities associated with their Interest, but prefer to practice these responsibilities in a manner and within an environment that is consistent with their style. For example, a Green Interest and Blue Style combination would be compatible with a career that involves persuasive interest performed in a humanistic, creative, and supportive manner. This is someone who likes selling, promoting, persuading, and group contact responsibilities, but who will be most comfortable with a product he believes in. That sounds like the description of a responsible, ethical mortgage broker who enjoys working with people to find the right loan product for their needs.

If you are someone with a Red Interest, you would likely be drawn to an active career or profession, for example a leadership role in a company. This might suggest that you’d thrive if you eventually opened your own mortgage broker company. But if coupled with a Blue Style, you’re likely to need some downtime to reflect on the work you are doing, while a Red Interest and Red Style, might maintain an entirely proactive work style. A Red Interest with a Yellow Style may be drawn to a leadership role, but is likely to operate conservatively with a close eye to the bottom line. Again, a healthy combination for a mortgage broker company owner.

Birkman divides the “S” style, active behavior, as follows:

Remember, these are guides, intended to give you some insight into your behavior and interests, as you decide if this is the right career for you.

The Least You Need to Know