Certainly this seems like a (meta-)low-hanging fruit.
There seem to be fairly effective interest / aptitude tests, that I remember taking in middle school. The level of detail is insufficient to identify low-hanging fruits (“you should go work in this particular research group”) but is still narrow enough to be useful (“these are the jobs that the 0.1% of the population most like you finds most satisfying”). This can raise to attention jobs or fields that are high impact or high paying that someone might not be consciously aware of, or realize that it suits them well. (The canonical example here is MRI sales; someone has to sell them, but a person with strong ability to remember facts and figures and understand technical things, and also to deal with people, may not have that come to mind as an intersection of their interests and aptitudes.)
I don’t know of any that are free, but What Color Is Your Parachute? is generally recognized as a good one, and is likely to be available at most used book stores—though would probably have to settle for an older edition.
There seem to be fairly effective interest / aptitude tests, that I remember taking in middle school. The level of detail is insufficient to identify low-hanging fruits (“you should go work in this particular research group”) but is still narrow enough to be useful (“these are the jobs that the 0.1% of the population most like you finds most satisfying”). This can raise to attention jobs or fields that are high impact or high paying that someone might not be consciously aware of, or realize that it suits them well. (The canonical example here is MRI sales; someone has to sell them, but a person with strong ability to remember facts and figures and understand technical things, and also to deal with people, may not have that come to mind as an intersection of their interests and aptitudes.)
Are any of these open/free to take, because I have use for such a test.
I don’t know of any that are free, but What Color Is Your Parachute? is generally recognized as a good one, and is likely to be available at most used book stores—though would probably have to settle for an older edition.
Edit: and any library will have a copy.