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

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. 

This is an opportunity to learn about yourself and even to critically reflect on what you love about work. What have you enjoyed about previous jobs? What is really important to you? What makes you happy in a job? What roles are going to be a good fit for you?

The Work Style tab is a summary of the behaviors you are most likely to show at work, and how your personality may display itself in the workplace. It also describes what job environments you are a good fit for, and that you are most likely to be happy in.

You will notice that these statements do not reference any specific job task. We want to get you thinking about what is behind the tasks that you really love doing at work. 

The Work Preferences tab offers a guide on how to determine how good of a fit your current role or perhaps even your next opportunity is with your Talents. You will find questions you can ask yourself about a role to make sure it meets your needs and lets you utilize your strengths.  The better a role aligns with what you are naturally good at, the more likely you are to enjoy it and do it well.

You may read statements about your personality that describe work situations or aspects that are challenging for you, or workplace environments that may not be ideal for you. How you responded to the Plum Discovery Survey told us that these environments are not ones that you would naturally enjoy.  Everyone has environments or tasks that drain them. This does not mean that you cannot exhibit that Talent or that you are bad at it. With work experience, coaching, mentoring or through studies, you have developed compensatory strategies. These strategies may have taught you how to perform well in Talents that drain you.

For example, if your Profile says “You are sensitive to criticism and rejection. You are likely to feel dissatisfied if a role requires you to persuade and influence others to your way of thinking.” The way to interpret that statement is that “working in such an environment will drain you”. It may cost you more energy to face situations in which your contribution could be regularly criticized or rejected, like in a sales position for example.

This does not mean you could never work in these environments or be successful in these situations. This simply means these environments would be more draining for you, and you will likely feel worn down over time if constantly in these situations.

• 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 have all been showed to introduce considerable bias in the selection process. Therefore, one of Plum's goal is to reduce bias at hiring 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. Therefore, Plum leverages a forced-choice or ipsative methodology. This forces you to choose between desirable options, therefore 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, however these will "run your battery" further, or you will tend not to prioritize 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. As you may have seen in your Work Style and Work Preferences, there are some areas of challenge presented in your Plum Profile. 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, Work Style and Work Preferences 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.