Discover career paths that fit your Natural Abilities
Introduction
In today’s rapidly evolving world of work—where artificial intelligence reshapes industries, job titles are fluid, and the shelf life of skills is shrinking — it’s no longer enough to ask, “What do you know how to do?” A more powerful question is: “What are you naturally capable of doing well?”.
This shift reflects a growing consensus in workforce development and talent research: Innate, measurable human abilities—those that remain stable over time—provide a more reliable foundation for long-term career success than job-specific skills alone.
The Assessment
The Highlands Ability Battery (HAB) is a human assessment tool, consisting of 19 timed work samples, that objectively measures your natural abilities by asking you to perform specific tasks or exercises. As part of the Highlands Whole Person Model, the HAB is the foundation and starting point to identify the career best suited for you.
Unlike personality tests or interest surveys, the Highlands Ability Battery (HAB) is a performance-based assessment that objectively measures human abilities—how individuals naturally process information, solve problems, and interact with the world around them.
Here are just a few examples of how HAB-measured abilities relate directly to workplace readiness:
- Classification & Concept Organization – Vital for knowing specific problem-solving approaches for a range of roles and responsibilities from navigating complex information, organizing processes, decisively taking action, and structuring strategies in fast-paced environments.
- Spatial Relations Theory & Visualization – Useful in roles that require design, logistics, systems thinking, and physical or digital space management.
- Time Frame Orientation – Supports strategic visioning, planning, execution, and the ability to think strategically across short and long-term horizons.
- Tonal, Rhythm & Design Memory – Contribute to nuanced communication, creative production, and the ability to retain auditory, visual, or design-based information.
These insights not only help individuals understand how they work best—they also offer a roadmap for where and how their abilities can be applied most effectively.
For a full list and description of the individual abilities measured by the HAB, see:
Your Natural Abilities: What the Research Reveals and How They Are Measured – The Highlands Company.
Your Results
After you complete all 19 work samples, you will receive customized reports that provide insights into how you think, what makes you tick, and where you will thrive. Your results are revealed in an individual analyses report of more than 30+ pages.
The report begins with your personal profile, showing the score achieved for each ability and its significance as it relates to your personality, your motivation, how you learn, communicate, solve problems, and make decisions.
HAB reports also include an interactive career supplement that combines your personal style with what motivates you to reveal personal patterns of abilities.
These patterns are then aligned with careers to explore. Each career recommendation is linked to the U.S. Department of Labor’s ONET Online to provide you with the most current data for each occupation.
Personalized Debrief
To thoroughly understand and connect personal experience to the knowledge gained from the results of the assessment and highly detailed reports, a Highlands Certified Consultant (HCC) will meet with you for a 1.5-hour debrief session by video conference. This in-depth and personalized review sets the HAB apart from other assessments, ensuring consistent quality feedback about the client’s scores along with a discussion of their practical, real-world applications.
The debrief further serves to enrich your understanding of the results and empower you to apply that knowledge for years ahead. You’ll understand how to evaluate different work roles and environments with confidence, knowing that you can discern what situations play to your strengths from those that will be more challenging.
Unlock Your Potential
Discover your natural abilities and align with the best-fit career pathways through our human-centered coaching approach.