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Exploring why career practitioners use assessments, as well as how they can select the appropriate tools and effectively interpret client results

JoAnn Harris-Bowlsbey

A version of this article also appears in the 2019 Summer issue of Career Developments, the National Career Development Association print magazine.

Assessment has played an important role in career guidance since its beginning in the early 20th century. According to the Joint Committee on the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing of the AERA, APA and NCME (Joint Committee on Testing Practices, 2004), the definition of assessment is “Any systematic method of obtaining information from tests and other sources, used to draw inferences about characteristics of people, objects, or programs.” This article uses the term “career guidance” to refer to interventions with young people and adults related to educational and vocational choices. The purpose of the article is to review with career development facilitators and counsellors the purposes, options and guidelines for use of assessment in career guidance and counselling.

Purposes of assessment

It is possible to view the plethora of assessment instruments available in our field in three categories: a) those that support career exploration, b) those that identify career development needs, and c) those that measure accomplishment in areas related to educational or career development goals. Let’s look at each of those separately.

The purpose of the first segment of assessments available in our field is to help individuals find focus for exploration. This segment includes inventories of interests, skills, work-related values and personality characteristics. The number of occupational options is vast, with 974 groups of occupations defined in O*NET (the National Occupational Classification [NOC] system categorizes jobs in Canada), each of which can be broken down into many more defined occupations. The National Career Cluster Framework (Advance CTE, 2019) defines 16 industry-related clusters, which can be divided into 79 groups called pathways.

To find focus for exploration

The Holland classification system (Holland, 1997) defines six work environments, under which hundreds of occupations are categorized by educational levels in the Dictionary of Holland Occupational Codes (Goddfredson & Holland, 1996). It is impossible for individuals seeking to choose an occupation to learn about all of these options. Thus, one very valuable use of assessment inventories is to find focus for exploration.

ACT’s World-of-Work Map (Prediger, 1981) arranges hundreds of occupations by Holland work environments and 26 Career Areas. There are assessments whose results direct individuals’ focus to options in each of these four organizational schemes, allowing them to identify groups of occupations that align with their interests, skills, values and/or personality traits. Career explorers can then identify specific occupations they are interested in and “reality test” (using Donald Super’s term) this manageable set by reading, job shadowing, course work, etc.

To identify career decision-making and development needs

Though it sounds easy to administer an interest inventory, interpret it and shepherd career decision-makers through exploratory interventions, a significant proportion of career explorers have intrapersonal challenges that need to be removed before they are able to follow a logical process to a well-informed choice. Theorists define these barriers differently. Super (1957) describes a poor self-concept or the lack of completing specific development tasks as barriers. Krumboltz (1991) focuses on negative career beliefs. Sampson and his colleagues (1996) refer to negative career thoughts. Dinklage (1968) emphasizes ineffective decision-making styles.

The assessment tools in this category measure such intrapersonal challenges. The results may be used to work with individuals on specific identified problems or, for example, to assign members of a career planning course to different levels and kinds of intervention.

To measure progress in desired learning or attitudes

Similarly, such assessments may be used for research or for program evaluation. For example, a measure of career decidedness may be administered to two matched groups: one that has not had a course in career planning and one that has had such a course. The hypothesis is that the group that has completed the career-planning course will have a higher mean score on career decidedness than the group that did not have the course. Such an assessment could also be used with one group prior to taking the career-planning course and again afterward. The goal in this case would be to measure change in specific career attitudes or behaviours triggered by the content of the course.

Assessments of this kind can also be used to measure the attainment of skills, such as behavioural skills or academic skills. After individuals receive training and retake such tests, an increase in these skills can be measured. Similarly, students’ achievement toward mastering specific standards or goals can be measured by instruments in this category.

Types of assessments

Assessment tools in our field are typically divided into two categories: formal and informal. Formal assessments have these characteristics: a) their content, specific items, scoring algorithms and score reports are developed with scientific rigour; b) this fact results in the publisher being able to state their reliability and validity; and c) the combination of the first two makes it possible to compare the score of an individual to that of another or with those of a group with a high degree of scientific accuracy.

On the other hand, these characteristics – scientific rigour, known reliability and validity, and capability for comparison with others – are not central to informal assessments. They are tools such as card sorts, checklists, career fantasies, questionnaires and structured interviews. They own a legitimate space in our field and are used skillfully by many counsellors. They cost far less to develop and acquire, and they can be administered with far less advance planning.

Scientific rigour includes the careful completion of tasks such as the following:

• Clearly defining what is to be measured
• Clearly defining the component parts of what is being measured
• Developing items that measure the component parts
• Testing these items with members of the target population and modifying or replacing those that do not function well
• Choosing a norm group that mirrors the target population for which the assessment is developed
• Developing norms for various ages or grade levels
• Designing score reports that can be readily understood by counsellors and those who took the assessment

Methods of administering assessments

Informal assessments are typically administered by a counsellor or career development facilitator face-to-face in an office or classroom setting. For example, students or clients are asked to sort a set of cards, each of which contains the description of a value, into three stacks: those that “highly appeal to me,” those that are “somewhat appealing” and those that “I’d like to avoid.” In a different setting, a counsellor or career development facilitator may ask students in a career planning class to relax, close their eyes and imagine an ideal day at work – its location, work tasks, co-workers, degree of independence, length, concomitant lifestyle, etc. In yet another approach, a counsellor who has detailed knowledge of Holland’s theory may conduct a structured interview around the six work environments. In each of these cases, a trained counsellor is able to help a student or client draw inferences from the informal assessment that sheds light on potential career choices or changes.

Formal assessments are administered in print or digital forms. If they are standard tests in print form with right or wrong answers, they are administered under controlled conditions usually involving standard instructions, specified time limits, security of testing materials and test monitors. Such tests may also be administered in a computer lab, requiring that individuals prove their identity to access items that are delivered through a secure website. Some achievement or aptitude tests are adaptive, meaning that the computer selects items at increasing levels of difficulty until it finds the examinee’s general level of knowledge and then presents items only at that level. This type of test varies both in items used and in length of testing for different students.

Technology has revolutionized assessment in many ways, offering capabilities such as the following: adaptive testing; the use of videos, graphics and audio; administration to large numbers of people nationwide at their selected time; immediate scoring; online personalized interpretation of results; electronic transfer of results to counsellors; and the ability to easily share results, where appropriate.

Read more about assessments and training opportunities on CERIC’s CareerWise website:

8 free career assessment tools to help clients find their fit

Courses career professionals can take in summer 2019

Guidelines for selecting assessments

Following are some guidelines that may be helpful when selecting assessments to use with clients or students:

• Define clearly what you want to measure and why. Possibilities for what you want to measure could include interests, skills, aptitudes, personality traits, values, academic achievement, learning style, decision-making style and self-efficacy, to name a few. Reasons for measuring these might include to design career guidance interventions for individuals or groups of individuals, to define segments of your target population to receive different sets of interventions, to measure the effectiveness of your program, to determine whether students have achieved the goals set forth in a specific set of standards, etc.
• Develop a list of assessments designed to measure what you want to measure. Using a resource such as NCDA’s publication, A Counselor’s Guide to Career Assessment (Wood & Hays, 2019) will be invaluable. It describes assessments designed for various purposes and the 7th edition uniquely gives you online access to expert reviews in order to make an informed choice.
• Gather as much information as you can about the assessments you have identified. It is essential for you to determine whether each assessment has been developed and tested with individuals like those in your target population. For each, learn about its reliability, validity and theoretical base. Take the assessment yourself and administer it to a few students/clients. Study its score report to see if it is presented in a language and with graphics that will make it understandable to your population. Talk to or read reviews from counsellors who have used the assessment. Importantly, determine if the results of the assessment are compatible with other components of your program. For example, if your school’s occupational information is organized by Holland work environments, use an interest inventory that provides results by Holland types. Last, but certainly not least, assess the quality of the publisher. This involves the credibility of the author, the professional reputation of the publisher, the training offered to assure that the assessment is administered and interpreted properly, and the quality of customer service provided.
• Determine its practicality for your setting. This criterion includes how the assessment is administered (print or electronic) and scored, how counsellors can get training, length and requirements of administration, and cost.

Guidelines for interpreting assessment

Here are some guidelines for providing interpretation:

• Provide interpretation as soon as possible after students or clients have taken an assessment. Begin interpretation by reviewing why the person took the assessment and what it was like (eg, “you responded to 60 items by selecting one of five answers – like very much, like, neutral, dislike, dislike very much”). If true, be sure to indicate that there are no “right” or “wrong” answers.
• Provide the score report to the examinee and explain each section simply and in detail. If you conduct interpretation in a group, use an attractive PowerPoint presentation with a sample score report that students/clients see while having their own report in front of them.
• Provide an opportunity to students/clients to ask questions, and try to make sure you answer all questions immediately or within a reasonable timeframe.
• Be sure that you apply the results on the score report to the specific career concerns that the student or client is facing at the moment. This, of course, is the real reason for having taken the assessment. Its interpretation should be used to guide course selection, the tentative selection of an occupation or job, or whatever career concern the student or client has brought forward or your program of services is attempting to support.

Summary

This article has provided a general overview of the purposes of assessment, types of assessment, methods of administration, and guidelines for selecting and interpreting assessments. Understanding these concepts is just the beginning of preparation for informed use of assessments in career counselling and guidance. In-depth investigation of the effectiveness of specific assessments in various work settings and with members of various populations is essential.

JoAnn Harris-Bowlsbey, EdD, (bowlsbeyj@kuder.com) is an international authority in the areas of career development and counselling and a pioneer in the development and use of computer and web-based career planning systems. She has served as a high school director of guidance, university professor, career counsellor, executive director of the ACT Educational Technology Center, vice-president for development at Kuder, Inc., and president of the National Career Development Association. Dr Harris-Bowlsbey is the author of numerous print-based curricular materials, is widely published in academic journals and texts, and has delivered hundreds of workshops to counsellors at conferences and universities around the globe. She is the author of numerous versions of web-based career planning systems, of curricula for training of career development facilitators, and co-author of a leading textbook for the training of master’s level counsellors.

References

Advance CTE. (2019). National career clusters framework. Silver Spring, MD: Author.

Dinklage, L.B. (1968), Decision strategies of adolescents. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Goddfredson, G.D. & Holland, J.L. (1996). The dictionary of Holland occupational codes. Odessa, FL. Psychological Assessment Resources.

Holland, J. L. (1997). Making vocational choices: a theory of vocational personalities and work environments (3^rd edition). Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.

Joint Committee on Testing Practices (2004). Code of fair testing practices. Washington, D.C.: Author.

Krumboltz, J.D. (1991). The Career Beliefs Inventory. Menlo Park, CA: Mind Garden, Inc.

Prediger, D. P. (1981). Aid for mapping occupations and interests: A graphic for vocational guidance and research. Vocational Guidance Quarterly, 30, 21-36.

Sampson, J.P., Petersen, G.W., Lenz, J.G., Reardon, R.C., & Saunders, D.E. (1996). Career Thoughts Inventory. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.

Super, D. E. (1957). The psychology of careers. New York, NY: Harper.

Wood, C. & Hays, D.G. (2019). A counselor’s guide to career assessment instruments. Broken Arrow, OK: National Career Development Association.

While qualitative assessments can serve as fun and interesting activities, they should still be held to the same standards as their quantitative counterparts

Mary McMahon and Mark Watson

Career assessment has a long history in career development, dating back to the time of Frank Parsons’ (1909) work in the early 20th century. The purpose of career assessment is to assist clients with career exploration and self-exploration. Since Parsons’ time, career assessment has progressed in two strands that are distinct and divergent, despite their potential complementarity (Bright & Pryor, 2007; Brott, 2004). The first strand is statistically based quantitative career assessment, which has dominated career development practice and is evident in the many assessment instruments and inventories that assess personal traits. The second strand, qualitative career assessment (also evident in Parsons’ work), has largely lived in the shadows of its quantitative counterpart. Described as informal, flexible, open-ended, holistic, non-statistical and non-standardized (McMahon, Watson & Lee, 2019; Okocha, 1998; Palladino Schultheiss, 2005), qualitative career assessment is eminently compatible with the recent trend toward narrative career counselling because of its focus on storytelling and meaning making (Savickas, 2000). Despite a long history and the publication of the first book to specifically focus on qualitative career assessment (McMahon & Watson, 2015), it still faces the challenges of not being well understood and its development being widely regarded as less rigorous than quantitative career assessment. With these two challenges in mind, this article overviews qualitative career assessment and presents suggestions for its development and use.

The qualitative career assessment dilemma

Most career development practitioners can name card sorts, genograms and lifelines as examples of qualitative career assessment instruments. Fewer, however, can provide a succinct explanation of qualitative career assessment. Similarly, the career literature reveals inconsistent terminology related to qualitative career assessment (e.g. qualitative approach, qualitative measure, creative approach; informal assessment; “idiographic tools” [Brott, 2015, p. 32]) and a range of explanations as to what exactly it is (Gysbers, 2006; McMahon, in press; McMahon et al., 2019; Stebleton, 2007). This lack of definitional clarity poses a great challenge to qualitative career assessment and suggests the need for a consistent common definition. In a recent review, McMahon et al. (2019, p. 430) drew on a synthesis of definitions to offer a description of qualitative career assessment as “a structured qualitative instrument, technique or process that facilitates participant reflection” and advocated for more consistent use of the term qualitative career assessment rather than “catchy” synonyms.

Key features of qualitative career assessment instruments

A seeming lack of rigour is another challenge facing qualitative career assessment. While career practitioners may develop their own qualitative career assessment instruments, they should have a broader purpose than serving as fun and interesting activities to engage clients. McMahon, Patton, and Watson (2003) proposed suggestions for developing qualitative career assessment and outline steps in the development process as well as provide key features of qualitative career assessment instruments.

“Qualitative career assessment stimulates storytelling, and in doing so, facilitates learning about oneself through self-reflection and enhanced self-awareness.”

At the most fundamental level, qualitative career assessment needs a theoretical foundation. Theory guides practice and should influence the content and process of any assessment instrument. A set of clear, step-by-step instructions for clients should be a key feature of every qualitative assessment. These can help guide clients through a logical, sequential process of completing the assessment while simultaneously allowing flexibility for some clients. They also ensure that qualitative career assessment instruments can be completed in a reasonable timeframe, that they are holistic and that they include a debriefing process as a concluding step so that learning and meaning can be elicited. The step-by-step and debriefing processes encourage collaboration and co-operation between career practitioners and clients. For example, My System of Career Influences (McMahon, Patton & Watson, 2017; McMahon, Watson, & Patton, 2013) guides users through a structured process in a booklet format and the Motivated Skills Card Sort (Knowdell, 2005) provides a set of step by step instructions for users.

An essential step in developing qualitative career assessment is rigorously testing it. Testing will determine if it works and for whom, what benefits users derive from it and glitches that need to be overcome. To ensure rigour in evaluating qualitative career assessments, career practitioners and researchers should:

• underpin their research with a theoretical framework;
• consider the research sample;
• use culturally valid research methods;
• apply appropriate criteria for reliability and validity or trustworthiness; and
• consider ethical issues (McMahon et al., 2019).

Documenting these points in written reports of the research for publication will enhance rigour.

Qualitative assessments in practice

So, what exactly does qualitative career assessment mean for career counselling? Qualitative career assessment complements narrative career counselling because both share similar philosophical and theoretical bases, actively involve clients in the process and encourage reflection (Brott, 2004; Savickas, 2000). Qualitative career assessment stimulates storytelling, and in doing so, facilitates learning about oneself through self-reflection and enhanced self-awareness. For career practitioners, the use of qualitative career assessment in their practice will mean placing greater emphasis on the practitioner-client relationship and collaborative engagement with clients in the selection, administration and interpretation of assessment (McMahon, in press). The use of qualitative career assessment may be negotiated with clients which encourages client agency in the career counselling process. Consequently, career practitioners are required to relinquish “expert” status and embrace curiosity, inquiry, listening and observation (McMahon, in press).

For some career practitioners, using qualitative career assessment may be daunting. However, some simple guidelines are available (McMahon & Patton, 2002).

1. Consider the client’s needs and the information gathered from the stories they have told.
2. In view of this background, if appropriate, identify a qualitative career assessment instrument that may be helpful to the client. Explain how the assessment works and why you think it will be helpful to them.
3. Ask the client if they wish to participate and respect their decision.
4. Work collaboratively through the qualitative career assessment with the client and support them.
5. At the conclusion of the qualitative career assessment, debrief the process with the client to elicit learning and meaning and seek feedback from them.

By following these simple steps, the use and type of qualitative career assessment will be determined on the basis of client need rather than career practitioner preference.

Concluding thoughts

Qualitative career assessment has a lot to offer career practitioners and clients. So does quantitative career assessment. In no way does this article suggest that one is better than the other. They are different and used for different purposes, although they can be used in complementary ways. In view of the trend toward narrative career counselling, qualitative career assessment is well positioned to strengthen its position. Practitioners and researchers are reminded, however, that to do so may require the use of consistent terminology and also demonstrated rigour in research and practice.

Dr Mary McMahon is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. She has researched and written extensively about qualitative career assessment and is a co-editor of the first book on qualitative career assessment.

Professor Mark Watson is an Honorary Professor at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, and a former Distinguished Professor at the Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He researches and writes in the field of career psychology and is a co-editor of a book on qualitative career assessment.

References

Bright, J. E. H., & Pryor, R. G. L. (2007). Chaotic careers assessment: How constructivist and psychometric techniques can be integrated into work and life decision making. Career Planning and Adult Development Journal, 23(2), 46-56.

Brott, P. E., (2004). Constructivist assessment in career counseling. Journal of Career Development, 30(3), 189-200

Gysbers, N. C. (2006). Using qualitative career assessments in career counselling with adults. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 6, 95-108.

Knowdell, R. L. (2005). Motivated Skills Card Sort. San Jose, CA: Career Research and Testing.

McMahon, M. (In press). Qualitative career assessment: A higher profile in the 21^st century? In J. Athanasou & H. Perera (Eds.), International handbook of career guidance (2^nd ed.).

McMahon, M., & Patton, W. (2002). Using qualitative assessment in career counselling. International Journal of Educational and Vocational Guidance, 2(1), 51-66.

McMahon, M., Patton, W., & Watson, M. (2003). Developing qualitative career assessment processes. The Career Development Quarterly, 51, 194-202.

McMahon, M., Patton, W., & Watson, M. (2017). The My System of Career Influences (MSCI – Adolescent): Reflecting on my career decisions. Brisbane, Australia: Australian Academic Press.

McMahon, M., & Watson, M. (2015). Career Assessment: Qualitative approaches. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.

McMahon, M., Watson, M., & Lee, M. C. Y. (2019). Qualitative career assessment: A review and reconsideration. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 110 Part B, 420-432.

McMahon, M., Watson, M., & Patton, W. (2013). The My System of Career Influences Adult Version (MSCI Adult): A reflection process. Brisbane, Australia: Australian Academic Press.

Okocha, A. A. G. (1998). Using qualitative appraisal strategies in career counseling. Journal of Employment Counseling, 35, 151-159.

Palladino Schultheiss, D. E. (2005). Qualitative relational career assessment: A constructivist paradigm. Journal of Career Assessment, 13, 151-159.

Parsons, F. (1909). Choosing a vocation. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Savickas, M. L. (2000). Renovating the psychology of careers for the twenty-first century. In A. S. Collin & R. Young (Eds.), The future of career (pp. 53-68). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Stebleton, M. (2007). Career counseling With African immigrant college students: Theoretical approaches and implications for practice. The Career Development Quarterly, 55(4), 290-312.

Evaluations can offer insights into clients’ satisfaction and success

Peggy Shkuda

How can we measure our success as career counsellors and educators? No matter where we work, we all want to deliver excellent service, but measuring the outcome of individual sessions is not easy.

Many of us rely on our own intuition and experience to judge the success of our one-on-one sessions – an inherently biased assessment. We may believe we made an impact, but the client could think otherwise. For example, the client may be disappointed because we asked hard questions, challenged their views or did not provide an easy answer to their career concerns. Does that mean we did not do a good job? On the other hand, we may believe that the session did not go well, but the client took away an important insight that was not evident to us. Without proper metrics to evaluate our work, how do we know that we are facilitating growth or helping our client achieve his/her goals?

Using assessments to measure success

At the University of Toronto Mississauga, we use a two-pronged method: client evaluation and counsellor evaluation.

Client evaluation

Once a year, we ask students to evaluate their one-on-one sessions through client-satisfaction surveys. We have two different evaluations – one for first-time sessions and another for returning students. Generally, the results have been favourable, with most students indicating they were satisfied with the session, felt heard and would recommend the service to a friend. Some students said that the appointments could have been better if they had been more prepared. This indicated to us that students gained some insight into how their role influenced the outcome of the session. We continue to use this method of assessment, because we value the client’s perspective.

However, this method of evaluation does not always give us insight into how successful the client has been in addressing their concern. Client satisfaction and client success are not necessarily the same thing. For instance, a client may be very satisfied because we focused all our attention on them, actively listened and appeared genuinely engaged with their problems when no one else was. While a strong, non-judgmental client-counsellor relationship is important to the process, we also want to learn whether we were effective in helping the client move forward after their appointment.

Another concern is that annual or bi-annual evaluations tell only part of the story, capturing a moment in time. For initial appointments, much of the time is spent developing a positive rapport, gathering information and inquiring about the client’s goals. We may have been successful in developing a positive relationship, but haven’t really focused specific actions toward the goals; we’ve just begun to identify them.

Evaluations using longitudinal studies are another potential source of evidence-based information for one-on-one sessions. One way to do this would be to keep data on a variety of clients who seek career guidance and then track their sessions over an extended period. This type of study can take place over a period of weeks, months or years. At our Career Centre, we hold one-on-one appointments to go through evaluations with student staff at the start of their employment and at the end of their work term. The students also have access to follow-up appointments with a career counsellor. We noticed that career education, career decision-making, planning and confidence improved from the initial counselling session.

We have also tried this method with large numbers of students participating in a series of class workshops and have seen progression in self-clarity, comfort in making a career decision and knowledge of occupations. Interestingly, in some groups, we found a decrease in decisiveness on a specific career, which we hypothesized came from deeper exploration into self and occupations, resulting in students re-evaluating their career decisions. There are limitations to longitudinal studies, however, because students drop out, which means that the data collected may not always be reliable with a shrinking sample size. The data is still useful for observing trends that can be investigated further via focus groups or individual interviews.

Counsellor evaluation

The second method we have introduced is a self-reflection exercise that the counsellor completes immediately after the session. The exercise includes questions such as:

• Was I able to clarify what the presenting issue was in order to better understand the student?
• Were there aspects of the discussion that were difficult for the student?
• Were we able to find a common understanding of the issue/question that the student identified by the end of the session?
• How do I know this? What else could I have done to improve the discussion?

This type of self-reflection has the potential to be helpful because it creates a method for each counsellor to go beyond a gut reaction to a session by providing a guided set of challenging questions that forces us to reflect. The outcome of this two-pronged approach remains to be seen but I am hopeful that it will lead to positive outcomes for both counsellor and client.

Despite the limitations of any evaluation, they are worthwhile because it gives you some indication on how effective your service is. They may take you out of your comfort zone, but with a supportive leader and a great team, evaluations can be helpful to your professional growth. If you are in private practice, consider implementing evaluations so that you are not working in a vacuum. Regular evaluations can help improve service delivery and, in the end, benefit our clients. Isn’t that what we all want?

Peggy Shkuda has a Master of Education specializing in counselling psychology with a focus on career development. She is also a registered psychotherapist with 10 years of experience working as a career counsellor in the corporate and not-for-profit sectors. She currently works as a career counsellor at the University of Toronto Mississauga campus. Prior to that, she enjoyed a successful career as a TV documentary producer/director specializing in arts programming.

Discussing clients’ experiences, values, way of being and future possibilities can help deepen activate and deepen their awareness and perspective

Britt-Mari Sykes

In my career counselling practice, informal assessment strategies play a vital role in understanding what a client is experiencing, in discovering possible next steps and in harnessing personal agency.

Addressing the whole person – working with the multi-layered and specific contexts that are the reality of a client’s life – provides a more substantive, authentic and personalized foundation from which to help them work through career transitions. 

Career transitions are emotionally challenging

Career transitions can be emotionally challenging periods coupled with personal and financial stress. They can shake a client’s self-esteem and sometimes raise deeper existential questions of purpose, meaning and what constitutes a fulfilling career.

Career transitions are not always freely chosen. In such cases, clients can feel that they have no personal agency. They may feel frustrated at not having the freedom to make decisions about their lives.

“Career transitions are time-consuming, emotionally draining and require a lot of energy …”

Periods in our lives such as these can allow for reflection and re-assessment, resulting in new career directions. Transitions can, therefore, prove to be an enormously valuable and positive experience that leads to personal growth and development.

The process, pace and outcomes for each client are always individual and unique. As such, they demand a customized approach to assessing what is possible for a given client.

An experiential approach 

In my practice, I use an integrative and experiential approach. It is an approach to career counselling that takes into consideration the whole person.

An experiential approach:

• considers an individual’s varied experiences and the influence and impact those experiences have had, and continue to have, on how an individual navigates, shapes and contributes to their life and work;
• takes into account a client’s values and how those values shape personal definitions of meaningful work, purposeful careers, relationships and goals;
• respects and highlights an individual’s unique way of being, their personal experiential expertise and capacities;
• builds on what is possible for a client (this means merging a client’s aspirations and dreams with what is accessible and realistic); and
• looks at concurrent and overlapping issues that may impede or influence the direction and progress of a client’s desired outcome for career change. This includes a client’s access to – and inclusion in making – career choices.

Informal assessments – getting to the heart of a client’s experience

Informal assessments are vital to an integrative approach. They provide career development professionals (CDPs) with a more substantial understanding of what a client is experiencing and what is possible for them moving forward.

Informal assessments require open-ended conversation, active listening and a desire from the CDP to understand, rather than interpret, their client’s experience. Informal assessments necessitate exploratory questions that generate reflective exploration, deepened awareness and a shift in perspectives within clients; these are key to activating a client’s interest in engaging with new possibilities.

The following are some of the conversational areas I explore with clients to better understand what they are experiencing.

Individual context

Career transitions are often loaded with concurrent issues. Clients may also be contending with financial, familial, age-related or geographical considerations or worries. These can affect how a client is experiencing their life, their assumptions and beliefs about their skills and their ability to secure work, and the meaning career holds for them.

These contexts also influence how a client reacts to the transition, including their motivation and focus, and their resistance to or acceptance of change. A deeper understanding of a client’s unique context provides a wealth of information from which both counsellor and client can creatively co-construct what is possible and realistic for that client.

Acceptance

Accepting career transitions and change is often a difficult hurdle for many people. It is therefore important to discuss and elucidate the degree to which a client accepts their current situation.

A transition that is the result of a job loss deserves distinct acknowledgement. Supporting a client in expressing this loss helps them move toward accepting their current situation, which will free up emotional space and energy they can use to move in a new direction.

Motivation

Career transitions are time-consuming, emotionally draining and require a lot of energy to promote oneself and to navigate the change.

Understanding the shifts in a client’s motivation, openly discussing it and working with these fluctuations helps a client weather and manage the emotional waves that come with change. This deeper understanding allows for the discovery of personal resilience and illuminates personal attitudes toward their current situation and toward career generally.

Identity disruption

Many clients I have worked with have felt a profound disruption in their sense of self during career transition.

I have encountered clients who express tremendous fear or intractable resistance at the prospect of changing careers because of a perceived loss of identity. Others feel a transition or change will result in a loss of certain key capacities and skills associated with their identity.

Openly discussing identity and its relation to our work and careers can be beneficial in helping a client separate who they are from what they do in the work world. It can also help a client understand the fluid boundaries between the two.

Identifying a client’s “experiential expertise”

While our identities are certainly shaped and influenced to a degree by the work we engage in, we are always more than any one job. We are in fact continuously developing and accumulating a unique and individual experiential expertise.

Discovering, identifying and articulating a client’s experiential expertise is extremely helpful during periods of transition. Clients come to see the depth and expanse of their expertise from a broader perspective. They become able to differentiate a skill set associated with a job from a much more broadly acquired personal expertise, and to see that expertise as more flexible, valuable and transferable.

Taking a holistic approach

Informal assessment strategies work from a holistic perspective. They activate and deepen a client’s awareness and perspective. Clients thereby develop vital experiential muscles that help them access personal agency and identify what is possible. Helping clients to create the navigational tools that are personally appropriate to step through a career transition successfully is the goal.

Britt-Mari Sykes, PhD, is an integrative career counsellor with an extensive background in existential and humanistic psychotherapies, career counselling and teaching. She is the author of Questioning Psychological Health and Well-Being (2010), a historical and contemporary examination of the meaning of psychological health and development. She is currently working on her second book, a collection of essays on education and career from an Existential Analytic perspective. Based in Ottawa, Sykes works remotely with a diverse global clientele, helping them to create personally empowered solutions to career transition, burnout and the building of meaningful careers. brittmarisykes.ca, brittmari@brittmarisykes.ca

Some students are looking for career tests to provide them with clear-cut answers and a-ha moments

Dawn Schell

Viveka is a third-year student who started off her degree with enthusiasm and confidence, but lately is not enjoying her program and thinks she might like to switch. She isn’t sure what else she would like to study. She has invested a great deal of time into her education already and is worried about what a change would mean for her.

Jamie is a first-year student who is eager to know what their career options are, because they don’t want to waste their time or money while at university.

Fred is close to finishing his degree and is planning to work immediately after graduation, but he has no ideas about what he can do with his education. He hasn’t given much thought to it yet as he’s been busy with school.

These are some of the more common reasons students seek career counselling at the University of Victoria’s Counselling Services office. Students can find it confusing to navigate career planning during post-secondary. They face conflicting messages about the world of work as well as pressures from parents and community, and financial challenges. Students frequently say they feel the weight of making the “right” decision and are looking for some way to validate or confirm their choices.

Some students struggle with the belief that they “should” know what they want to do. They often say that everyone around them seems to know, and they feel isolated and left behind in their uncertainty.

Career exploration through assessments

While we offer a variety of career exploration services, students often request career assessments as a way to answer their questions. This is despite the fact that students often share stories of receiving – in their opinion – absurd career options for assessments taken in high school.

At the University of Victoria, we offer the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Strong Interest Inventory career assessments. We also offer the Career Interest Profiler (Canadian edition), Career Values Scale and the Work Personality Index. However, there is little uptake on these options, even though those who have tried them have found them helpful.

What are students expecting when they complete a career assessment? A few are anticipating clear-cut answers, angel voices singing, bright lights, a-ha moments. Some want confirmation for the path they are already considering. Most often, students are looking for ideas to explore. As one student recently told me, “I have a narrow idea of what type of work is out there and I want to expand my horizons.” This rings true for many students. Often their only exposure to work is their experiences at school and what their family members do for a living.

Managing expectations

It is important to manage students’ diverse expectations about what career assessments can accomplish. One way we do this is with a clear statement on our website and our brochures. It reads, “These assessments will not make career decisions for you. It will be a good source of ideas and information … no assessment can tell you who you are or what to do but it might give you words to claim who you are.”

When we begin an interpretation session with a student, we start by finding out what they are expecting from the assessment results. This helps to direct some of the conversation about the results and how to interpret them.

Then, we ask for their career story. Their story teaches us about their interests, skills, values, strengths, pressures, supports, work and volunteer history. We encourage students to make career decisions based on a more fulsome picture than can be derived solely from the assessment. We also remind students that making career decisions is a lifelong, dynamic process. Our aim is help them make an informed choice.

The limitations of assessments

While formal assessments are useful, they are imperfect tools. One limitation we have observed is that the assessments we use require the student to identify as either male or female. This can be an issue for gender-diverse students. One way we try to mitigate concerns is to inform students that assessments require one to identify as either male or female. This is done in person and through a statement on our brochure and website. While this does not solve the problem, it acknowledges the existence of the issue.

For some members of our international community who want to take career assessments, language skills can be a barrier. While some assessments are offered in multiple languages, the results need to be in English so our counsellors can do the interpretation. For some, we recommend they have an individual career counselling session or participate in a career exploration group. In cases where the student still chooses to take the formal career assessments in English, we offer additional time in the interpretation session to address language issues and cultural context.

Another limitation is there are few references in career assessments to technological innovations or the rise of artificial intelligence. It’s not an easy task to keep these assessments up to date when the world of work is rapidly changing.

A continuing conversation

The real work in any career assessment process is the conversation we have during the interpretation. We are weaving their career story into the interpretation, pointing out interesting paradoxes or ideas that connect to what they shared, and creating a bigger picture of who they are and what they might like to do. We end each session with reviewing places they can gather more information about career options online or via informational meetings. We encourage students to share their results with people they trust and continue to process their meaning. Finally, we are clear that the interpretation isn’t the end of the conversation. Students are always welcome to come back.

Dawn Schell, MA, CCC, CCDP has been a career counsellor for over 20 years. While Schell’s main focus has been working with young adults, she has also worked with mid-career changers and retirees. She believes career development is a lifelong process and delights in seeing clients find meaning and purpose in all stages of life.

Amid changes in the world of work, it is in the best interests of employers, career development practitioners and educational institutions to help jobseekers develop employability skills

Jeff Landine

With an increasing number of young people entering the workforce with post-secondary education in hand, and employers saying they are more concerned with workers’ punctuality and interpersonal skills than with their technical abilities (Lerman, 2013), the factor differentiating graduates who get hired from those who don’t may be employability skills. While schools are providing the next wave of employees with sectoral knowledge and technical skills (often called hard skills), employers are lamenting graduates’ lack of soft skills (Cassidy, 2006).

Lest young graduates be unfairly criticized, soft skills are also required of adults entering or re-entering the workforce later in their careers. Jobseekers who are part of vulnerable populations including the homeless, chronically unemployed, people with disabilities and newcomers are particularly susceptible to the negative implications of employability skills deficits.

So, what are the skills necessary to work in Canada and how can we assess them?

What are employability skills and why do they matter?

Employability is rarely clearly defined and a search of the relevant literature divulges a fairly wide variety of descriptions. Most of these, however, contain the core idea that employability relates to an individual’s capability to obtain a job (Harvey, 2001). Thus, employability skills – or soft skills, as they are often referred to – are the skills that increase one’s capability of obtaining employment.

The shift from an industrial economy to a service and/or office economy has shifted employers’ emphasis to hiring for integrity, attitude, responsibility, self-management and communication skills (Robles, 2012). It is clear that non-academic or non-technical skills are important and the literature confirms that these employability or soft skills are not only integral to getting a job, but pay dividends in terms of job mobility and earnings (Lerman, 2013).

Soft skills have been described as a combination of interpersonal and social-emotional skills, in contrast to the technical and administrative skills and procedures that typically constitute hard skills. Hard skills are often acquired through formal education and training while soft skills are, for the most part, developed through personal experience and reflection. However, these skill sets are complementary in the sense that they are both necessary if an employee is to remain employed and both contribute to the success of the organization (Rego, 2017). 

Can these skills be assessed?

It is incumbent that educational institutions and career development personnel be able to assess the development of employability skills. Unlike hard skills, however, which can be evaluated using more traditional means such as tests, employability skills are difficult to objectively assess. Assessment of employability skills most often involves the observation of a particular activity or task as it is being performed (Kechagias, 2011).

Formative assessment occurs when observation is combined with the provision of timely and supportive feedback. Unfortunately, programs that teach technical skills for future specialization often don’t assess and develop employability skills effectively, as sustained effort in the formative process of observation and feedback is typically needed to reinforce these skills. The job of assessing and developing these skills is made even more difficult because they are contextual and are best learned and most applicable in connection to a specific job. A formative assessment process that involves supervisors and employers is likely the most effective way to assess employability skills.

So how should employability skills be assessed?

There is a lot of variability across the literature on how best to measure employability skills. Valid and reliable assessment tools are available (eg, the Employment Readiness Scale [Ward & Riddle, 2014]), but these tend to focus on a broad but limited number of employability-related factors. Some sectors have established methods for assessing and benchmarking soft skills (eg, health care or public relations), but this is not the case for the majority of sectors (Cukier et al., 2015).

There is evidence to support the belief that these skills can and will be learned in the course of gaining experience. In fact, research suggests that the development of employability skills may require learning in actual workplaces (Lerman, 2013).

Gibb (2014) offers a number of suggestions, based on the work of Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006), for making effective use of experience and feedback in the interest of developing and assessing these skills. He advises that the assessment of employability skills needs to take place in a safe environment and involve the following practices:

• Connecting employability skills with the performance goals of the organization in an explicit way. This means clarifying what good performance looks like. Rubrics are useful to this end for formative and summative forms of assessment (DiMartino & Castaneda, 2007).
• Paying equal attention to both observable behaviour and an employee’s perceptions of their own behaviour.
• Ensuring that the information used to support feedback is sound – observations are valid and reliable, the information used is concrete and relevant and inferences are minimal.
• Providing feedback that is goal-referenced, actionable, timely and consistent, and pointing out opportunities to close the gap between the level of performance that has been observed and what is required.
• Encouraging self-assessment and reflection on learning and skill-development opportunities.
• Encouraging positive beliefs and self-esteem that contribute to motivation for learning and skill development.
• Employing assessment that is adaptable to new skill requirements and allows opportunities for creativity on the part of the employee.
• Giving equal and objective treatment to all employees.

Conclusion

The world of work is changing and so are the skills employees need to participate in it. Formative assessment of employability skills should be an integral part of practicum and co-op experiences for students. Programs and workshops already exist in Canada that will provide training in employability skills and many of these use a formative assessment approach. Furthermore, it is in the best interests of employers to use assessment strategies as part of their performance review process with employees, as this can increase retention and reduce hiring costs.

Jeff Landine is Canadian Certified Counsellor (CCC) and Licensed Psychologist in New Brunswick. He works as a Counsellor Educator at the University of New Brunswick but also maintains a private practice where he particularly enjoys helping clients with career and employability needs.

References

Cassidy, S. (2006). Developing employability skills: Peer assessment in higher education. Education+ training, 48(7), 508-517.

Cukier, W., Hodson, J., & Omar, A. (2015). “Soft” skills are hard: A review of the literature. Ryerson University: Toronto, ON.

DiMartino, J., & Castaneda, A. (2007). Assessing Applied Skills. Educational Leadership, 64(7), 38–42.

Gibb, S. (2014). Soft skills assessment: theory development and the research agenda. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 33(4), 455–471. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2013.867546

Harvey, L. (2001). Defining and measuring employability. Quality in Higher Education, 7(2), 97–109. https://doi.org/10.1080/13538320120059990

Kechagias, K. (2011). Teaching and Assessing Soft Skills, MASS Project, 115-117.

Lerman, R. I. (2013). Are employability skills learned in U.S. youth education and training programs? IZA Journal of Labor Policy, 2(1), 6. https://doi.org/10.1186/2193-9004-2-6 

Rego, A. (2017). Soft Skills: Who says they can’t be taught? Canadian Journal of Medical Laboratory Science; Hamilton, 79(2), 11.

Robles, M. M. (2012). Executive perceptions of the top 10 soft skills needed in today’s workplace. Business Communication Quarterly, 75(4), 453-465.

Ward, V., & Riddle, D. (2014). Weaving soft skills development into everyday employment services in Canada. Career Development Association: Online Resources. Retrieved from https://cannexus.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Weaving-Soft-Skills_canada_20141.pdf.

How do new ways of working with clients get legitimized in the career development field? The OneLifeTools origin story offers some clues

Ali Breen

This article is based on an interview the author conducted with Mark Franklin, Co-founder of OneLifeTools and Practice Leader at CareerCycles.

How does a new assessment system become a standard, accepted method of practice?

As practitioners, we all learn theories and approaches to practice that have been widely adopted and used for decades. But what about new tools and assessments? How do new ways of working with clients get legitimized in our field?

These scenes from the OneLifeTools origin story aim to answer this question and paint a picture of innovating the field of career development from the inside out.

The lightbulb moment

We start with an engineer-turned-career-practitioner, frustrated as he reviews his scribbled notes in a campus counselling office. His notebook is filled with important data, repeating patterns and captured lightbulb moments from clients.

We cut to our career practitioner having his own lightbulb moment. After countless clients tell him stories about their lived experiences, he begins to see patterns emerge. Key elements are consistently revealed and explored, such as a client’s desires, strengths and personal qualities. They bring up the influence of other people on their education, life and work decisions.

He begins to use a flipchart, divided into quadrants, that pull out these elements – client after client, story after story. Then, the epiphany: “This is a systems approach. I can harness these stories and organize them so clients can reflect and power up their next steps!”

As helping professionals, we all innovate. With each new client we adapt the techniques and tools we have at our disposal to support the career development process. We synthesize our experiences and ideas, and other people’s ideas, too.

Arriving in the counselling world after a 10-year career in engineering, Mark Franklin’s transferable skills in systems thinking and engineering problem-solving paved the way for developing a new approach at the intersection of career counselling and systems. When he started in the career field, Mark says he was keen to learn everything he could, drawing on narrative experts like Michael White, (for example, White et al., 1990) and those who brought narrative ideas to career counselling, such as Mark L. Savickas (2012). To help clients navigate a lifetime of transitions, he integrated William Bridges’ change model (2004), Jim Bright and Robert Pryor’s chaos theory of careers (2011), Herminia Ibarra’s working identity (2004), and Kathleen E. Mitchell, Al S. Levin and John D. Krumboltz’s Happenstance approach (Mitchell et al., 1999). To foster a supportive mindset, he mixed in the work of positive psychologists such as Barbara L. Fredrickson (2001).

He also focused on the career counselling area of specialization in the Canadian Standards & Guidelines for Career Development Practitioners. This area tells practitioners to “demonstrate method of practice in interactions with clients, and to develop a method of practice that is grounded in established or recognized ideas” (The Canadian Council for Career Development & Canadian Career Development Foundation, 2012).

The next practitioner

It’s wonderful when something works well for us as practitioners. But can it work for others? Can it move from the confines of one office and expand out into the world?

So, Mark shares his innovation with a trusted peer, Leigh Anne Saxe:

“A system is made from interdependent parts that form a unified whole. A systems approach breaks things down into linked processes, with inputs and outputs.

In a narrative client session, the most important inputs are clients’ stories, their lived experiences, their present situation and their questions. For example, “I studied tech, I moved into video game development, but now I’m burnt out. What should I do next?” Additional inputs include the support and knowledge of a career professional, the feedback of trusted allies, and the results of informational interviews and field research conducted by the client.

The outputs are, within the OneLifeTools/CareerCycles framework, a Clarification Sketch, the main innovation at the heart of the system. It gathers and organizes client inputs into a visual representation, co-created by client and practitioner, which is divided into seven elements: desires, strengths, personal qualities, natural interests, assets, other people and possibilities. This leads to a second output, the Clarification Statement, which is a prioritized, forward-facing summary of the most important pieces of client stories, collected in the Sketch over the course of the coaching process.

The Clarification Statement acts as an output of the narrative clarification process, and as an input into the second, linked process of Intentional Exploration. Its output is Exploration Plans, based on taking inspired action that’s powered by the clarification gleaned by reflection on client stories using a systems approach.”

He demonstrates the same flip chart system he’s using with clients to Leigh Anne, and she tries it with her clients. It sticks. Mark trains a trusted handful of practitioners at his dining room table. It sticks with them, too.

The model that began on a flipchart becomes the Online Storyteller web application, a method of practice, a certification program and the basis for a clarification board game called Who You Are Matters!

A handful of practitioners adopt the narrative framework as their primary approach to client work. This is unique and disruptive. Often, the career development field focuses on quantitative assessments and derives models from theory. The OneLifeTools/CareerCycles framework is qualitative. It was born out of practice and moved into theory. It is now supported by peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters.

The living room

With every change, there are change-makers.

In our last scene, Mark is facilitating training and introducing an early version of a narrative board game with a group of thought leaders in Rich Feller’s living room in Fort Collins, Colorado. Professor and former co-ordinator of Counseling and Career Development at Colorado State University, and former president of the National Career Development Association, Rich acts as a scout for innovative tools and techniques. Rich and Mark become friends and business co-founders.

They lean on other change-makers in their circles. A number of talented associates and helping professionals over the years contribute to peer-reviewed, evidence-based outcome studies. A community of practice is built, and the co-founders, supported by a talented team, seek out continued feedback to refine the narrative system, expand it, share it widely in conferences, writing and training, and to integrate it with other tools and assessments such as YouScience, MBTI, Holland codes, card sorts and more.

The answer

The career practitioner sitting frustrated in his office, the shared vision on a flipchart and the movement sparked in a living room. These three scenes all play a part in the OneLifeTools origin story, and in addressing our initial question: how does a new form of assessment get adopted as a standard?

The answers lie in the tools, the stories, the evidence, the theory and, most of all, the people. When practitioners are open to new ways of doing their work, the field evolves, just as the world evolves around us.

Millennials Career Coach Ali Breen believes that your career can and should be a reflection of who you are and how you want to be in the world. She uses story-based, narrative approaches and experiential learning in her Halifax private practice. As a past corporate recruiter and bilingual career practitioner in non-profit employment centres, Breen has spent a decade on both the demand & supply sides of the Career Management table. She also draws from her experiences as Community Growth Manager for OneLifeTools and as a member of 3CD’s Outreach and Advocacy Working Group.

References

Bridges, W. (2004). Transitions: Making sense of life’s changes. Da Capo Lifelong Books.

Bright, J. E., & Pryor, R. G. (2011). The chaos theory of careers. Journal of Employment Counseling, 48(4), 163-166.

Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American psychologist, 56(3), 218.

Ibarra, H. (2004). Working identity: Unconventional strategies for reinventing your career. Harvard Business Press.
Mitchell, K. E., Al Levin, S., & Krumboltz, J. D. (1999). Planned happenstance: Constructing unexpected career opportunities. Journal of Counseling & Development, 77(2), 115-124.

Savickas, M. L. (2012). Life design: A paradigm for career intervention in the 21st century. Journal of Counseling & Development, 90(1), 13-19.

The Canadian Council for Career Development & Canadian Career Development Foundation. (2012). Canadian Standards and Guidelines for Career Development Practitioners – Areas of Specialization – Career Counselling [PDF] Retrieved from: http://career-dev-guidelines.org//wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Career-Counselling.pdf

White, M., White, M. K., Wijaya, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. WW Norton & Company.