What is a Plum Profile and how should I interpret it?

Congratulations! You completed the Discovery Survey and now have your personalized Plum Profile!

Your Plum Profile is a summary of your Talents and insights about your personality relevant to your career. It is generated using the results of the Plum Discovery Survey. 

To view your Plum Profile, sign in to Plum and navigate to Plum Profile, under My Plum.

 

 

Top Talents

 

The first part of your Plum Profile displays a summary of the top three Talents that drive you the most. These Talents are the ones that energize you, that you enjoy doing and that you have a natural ability for.



 

For each talent, you will find statements that explain the value you can bring to your job. You’ll notice that a lot of these descriptors are applicable to many jobs since talents are transferable to other roles you may have in your future. 

 

All Talents

You can dig deeper into your Plum Profile by viewing All Talents. Your Talents are displayed by most driving to most draining, left to right.


 

Within each Talent are several behaviors. Beside each behavior, you will see a battery that shows how likely you are to be driven or drained by that behavior. As the battery is fuller, the greater the likelihood that the behavior will come naturally to you. It is not possible to be driven/energized by everything.

 

 

Drivers and Drainers

  • Talents should not be considered good or bad, as different roles require different Talents. Instead, Talents should be seen as something that either Drives you or Drains you.
  • Your top Talents are your Drivers. They give you energy, you enjoy doing them, and/or you seem to have a natural ability for them.
  • Your bottom Talents are your Drainers. They take more energy to exhibit, and you may have to work harder at them as they do not seem to come naturally. This does not imply that you cannot exhibit or are “bad” at that talent. 

 

How should you interpret your Plum Profile?

  • Plum's goal is to quantify Talents, so that employers can make hiring decisions that are not solely based on traditional ways of selecting candidates: resume, interview performance, university attended, diplomas owned, age, gender, ethnicity, etc.  These factors introduce considerable bias in the selection process. One of Plum's goals is to reduce bias and allow employers to make the best decisions, based on an individual's innate abilities.

  • A person’s Talents are a combination of raw ability and their priorities. The Plum Discovery Survey was created to better understand what people truly prioritize in the workplace. Plum does this by leveraging a forced-choice or ipsative methodology. This forces you to choose between desirable options. Some Talents/behaviors come to the top and some at the bottom.  

  • Top Talents represent areas where someone is naturally good at and that energize them. You can still be extremely successful at behaviors associated with your bottom talents. These will simply "run your battery" further, or you will tend to deprioritize them in the workplace.  

  • Personality questionnaires assess personal behavioural preferences, that is, how you like to work. They are not concerned with your abilities, but how you see yourself in the way you relate to others, your approach to problems, and how you deal with feelings and emotions. With this type of assessment, there are no right or wrong answers. This is why we don't work with a "strength versus weakness" framework. Think of your areas of challenge as something that cost you more energy in doing, or run your battery down, in comparison to your top talents. We encourage individuals to focus on their top talents as areas where they naturally thrive, and that can serve as a great indicator of their potential success in a role. 

  • Your Talents matter because they indicate what will make you happy at work. Job fit happens when your Talents align with the work you do. When you experience good job fit, you are likely to feel more satisfied and engaged in your work. You are also more likely to feel successful at your job, and therefore less likely to quit. So ask yourself “Is this job aligned with my natural Talents?”

As you continue to pursue new opportunities throughout your career, you can use your Plum Profile to help you assess if these opportunities will allow you to take full advantage of the Talents that drive you. 

 

How do I use my Plum Profile to make career decisions?

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