Vocational Assessments
The Career Assessment and Planning Process
The emphasis is to provide assistance to clients that enables them to access key information for optimal career decision-making. Information from 2 broad sources is sought. The first of these broad sources could be termed ‘Self Information’ and includes:
- work interest fields and occupational naming.
- personal style preferences, ie, what does my personality lend itself to?
- transferable work skill appraisal for those with prior work histories.
- individual aptitudes and abilities.
The second of these 2 broad sources of information could be termed ‘External Information’ because it exists independently of any individual and includes:
- accessing the realities about specific occupations and about labour market trends.
- accessing information about training pathways that lead to specific careers.
Assessment Tools
- Whilst clients are in the process of identifying their desired career or vocational outcome certain psychometric tools can often be of assistance to them in this process.
- When assessing clients work preferences tools used include the Jackson Vocational Interest Survey (JVIS) or the Hollands Self-Directed Search (Hollands SDS).
- When assessing personal preference style the Majors Personality Type Inventory (Majors PTI) is useful. This is similar to the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI).
- When assessing transferable work skills the Motivated Skills Card Sort might prove useful as might a whole range of work skill checklists.
- When assessing labour market, job description and training pathway realities a whole range of sites freely available on the internet may be usefully accessed.
Peter Curry
Registered Psychologist
BA, Grad Dip (Psych)