WHAT QUALIFICATIONS DOES PETER HAVE

5. What qualifications does Peter have?

A. a degree

B. a school leaving certificate

C. a postgraduate diploma

PART 2. Questions 6 – 10

You will hear an interview with a representative of a wildlife park called Paradise

Wildlife Park. For questions

6 to

10, complete the sentences. Write only

ONE word in

each gap. (1.0 point)

PARADISE WILDLIFE PARK

- Project Life Lion is connected with diseases spread by (6) ___________dogs in Africa.

- The Park has created its own environmental (7) _____________________ system, and

other organizations use it.

- A wide variety of (8) _________________ events (e.g. barbecues) are held at the Park.

- For charity events, the Park will provide cheap tickets and competition (9) __________.

- The Park’s sister company gives people a chance to be a radio (10) ________________.

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II. READING (2.0 points)

PART 1. You are going to read a newspaper article about careers advice. For questions

1 – 5, choose the answer

A, B,

C or D which you think fits best according to the text.

(1.0 point)

FINDING THE CAREER THAT FITS YOUR PERSONALITY

“If you’ve finished your exams and have absolutely no idea what to do next, you’re

not alone,” says Sheridan Hughes, an occupational psychologist at Career Analysts, a

career counselling service. “At 18, it can be very difficult to know what you want to do

because you don’t really know what you’re interested in.” Careers guidance, adds Alexis

Hallam, one of her colleagues, is generally poor and “people can end up in the wrong job

and stay there for years because they’re good at something without actually enjoying it.”

To discover what people are good at, and more fundamentally, what they will enjoy

doing, Career Analysts give their clients a battery or personality profile questionnaires and

psychometric tests. An in-depth interview follows, in which the test results are discussed

and different career paths and options are explored with the aid of an occupational

psychologist. Career Analysts offers guidance to everyone, from teenagers to retirees

looking for a new focus in life. The service sounded just what I needed. Dividing my time

as I do between teaching and freelance journalism, I definitely need advice about

consolidating my career. Being too ancient for Career Analysts’ student career option

guidance and not, unfortunately, at the executive level yet, I opted for the career

management package. This is aimed at people who are established in their jobs and who

either want a change or some advice about planning the next step in their careers.

Having filled in a multitude of personality indicator questionnaires at home, I then

spent a rather gruelling morning being aptitude-tested at Career Analysts’ offices. The

tests consisted of logical reasoning followed by verbal, mechanical and spatial aptitude

papers. Logical reasoning required me to pick out the next shape in a sequence of

triangles, squares and oblongs. I tried my best but knew that it was really a lost cause. I

fared rather better when it came to verbal aptitude – finding the odd one out in a series of

words couldn’t be simpler. My complacency was short-lived, however, when I was

confronted with images of levers and pulleys for the mechanical aptitude papers. My mind

went blank. I had no idea what would happen to wheel X when string Y was pulled.

At home, filling in questionnaires, I had been asked to give my instinctive reaction

(not an over-considered one) to statements like: “It bothers me if people think I’m being

odd or unconventional”, or “I like to do my planning alone without interruptions from

others.” I was asked to agree or disagree on a scale of one to five with “I often take on

impossible odds”, or “It is impossible for me to believe that chance or luck plays an

important role in my life.” I was told to indicate how important I consider status to be in a

job, and how important money and material benefits.

The questions attempt to construct a picture of the complete individual. Using

aptitude test alongside personality profiling, occupational psychologists will, the theory

goes, be able to guide a client towards a rewarding, fulfilling career. Some questions are

as straightforward as indicating whether or not you would enjoy a particular job.

Designing aircraft runways? Preparing legal documents? Playing a musical instrument?

Every career going makes an appearance and, as I was shown later, the responses tend to

form a coherent pattern.

Having completed my personality and aptitude tests, I sat down with Sheridan

Hughes, who asked me fairly searching personal and professional questions. What do my

parents and siblings do for a living? Why had I chosen to do an English degree? “I need to

get a picture of you as a person and how you’ve come to be who you are,” she explained.

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“What we do works because it’s a mixture of science and counselling. We use objective

psychometric measures to discover our clients’ natural strengths and abilities and then we

talk to them about what they want from life.”

There were no real surprises in my own test results, nor in the interview that

followed it. “We’re interested in patterns,” Mrs. Hughes explained, “and the pattern for

you is strongly verbal and communicative.” This was putting it rather kindly. I had come

out as average on the verbal skills test and below average in logic, numerical, perceptual

and mechanical reasoning. My spatial visualization was so bad that it was almost off the

scale. “A career is cartography, navigation, tiling or architecture would not be playing to

your strengths,” she said delicately.

Mrs. Hughes encouraged me to expand the writing side of my career and gave me

straightforward, practical suggestions as to how I could go about it. “Widen the scope of

your articles,” she said. “You could develop an interest in medical and psychological

fields.” These latter, she said, would sit comfortably with an interest in human behavior

indicated on my personality-profiling questionnaires. She suggested that I consider writing

e-learning content for on-line courses, an avenue that would never have occurred to me.