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Running head: CAREER ASSESSMENTS AND CAREER COUNSELING 1

Career Assessments and Career Counseling

Wilson R. Harvey

West Virginia University


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Career assessments are perhaps one of the most powerful tools at the disposal of any

career counselor. Whether working with school-age students or adult clients, these assessments

can serve to drive the counseling forward in a multitude of ways. Assessment can be used to help

clients gain a measure of validation regarding their career path or even to simply open a

conversation with a client or clients. This does not mean, however, that assessment should be

used haphazardly or without regard for validity and reliability; indeed, it is possible that many

clients will put some significant stock into their assessment results, and so counselors should

both carefully vet assessments and thoroughly debrief their clients on those results. In taking

some career, interest, and personality inventories myself, both recently and over the summer, I

found them to be fairly confirmatory of my chosen career path and even helpful tools for

conversation with others.

Career Assessment with Clients

Assessment can have many uses in counseling, and career counseling is no different.

Indeed, career-based interest inventories have been a resource for career psychology and

counseling since at least the early 1900s (Harrington & Long, 2013). Though there are distinct

differences amongst humans that can make the challenge of assessment a difficult one, strong

assessments are those that can both capture the commonalities of humanity while delineating key

differences to offer a closely accurate portrayal of some facet of an individual. Crucial to our

understanding and use of assessment, however, is knowledge that various assessment measures

are limited in scope and should not be taken as concretely absolute due to the influence of

potentially confounding variables. When a client takes a career assessment, then, it is critical that

we as career counselors possess a deep enough understanding of the tool so as to not provide our

clients with an overly generalized interpretation of the results – for example, interpreting the
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results of an interest inventory as the definitive indicator in itself that a client should pursue a

certain career is both dangerous and unethical without obtaining further information. Even after

considering their limitations, however, there is a likely benefit to be had from the use of

assessments such as those I took – a simplified version of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the

MAPP Appraisal, and the Kiersey Profile – even in their simple ability to spark a conversation

with our clients. Through such discussion, we can help to facilitate a greater self-understanding

in our clients that in turn can help them in their career selection. Results from the Myers-Briggs,

for example, have been shown to help clients not only in the career selection process but also in

gaining valuable insights that can be used to help them understand how they best function in

interpersonal relationships and with various skills such as they might encounter and employ in

the workplace (Kennedy & Kennedy, 2004).

There are nevertheless significant shortcomings to be considered in using such

assessments, however. For starters, some of the more easily cost-accessible assessment tools

available through the internet are have been less heavily vetted and thus are not necessarily

empirically valid and thus could lead to or reinforce potentially false individualized concepts.

Because individuals’ self-perceptions and beliefs can influence their ability to make vocational

decisions (Bubic, 2017), the use of poor assessments – especially when they are not effectively

processed by the counselor – could actually lead to negative outcomes as a result of the

counseling process. Furthermore, each of the three assessments I took along with many other

career assessments may not be developmentally appropriate for young clients or those clients

whose reading levels are not strong. These factors, along with the general lengthiness of many of

these assessments, could lead to test fatigue amongst our clients and influence the results so as to

paint an inaccurate picture of our clients. Even I found myself drifting slightly during one of the
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assessments. For these reasons, the selection of developmental and skill-appropriate assessments

is a vital piece of using career assessments or interest inventories in counseling.

Personal Assessment Reflections

I had a mixed reaction to my personal results on these assessments. Though they were

lengthy and the results weren’t necessarily concise, I thought that the MAPP and the Kiersey

assessments were both fairly accurate in their reports on my personality and style (though with

both, and especially with the Kiersey, it seems that the results were limited by my not paying for

the full report). The MAPP captured my personal interests fairly well, from what I could tell,

especially highlighting my interest in working with others; though the depth of the full results

might be overwhelming to some of those we work with, it is noteworthy that many of its other

interpretations were also fairly accurate, including its highlighting of areas such as my analytical

nature. As for the Kiersey, I found that the general result of Idealist, though broad, was fairly

representative of my personality as a helper and someone who wants to promote , though it

would have been helpful to see a more thorough breakdown of my results in other areas. It was

also useful to see the way that the results interplayed with the Myers-Briggs, though the more

extensive connection was only available in a purchased reports. Both the MAPP and Kiersey

showed a high level of accuracy in regard to my career choice as well, simply based upon the

career path I have chosen.

The third assessment I took, offered on the Lonerwolf website, was the one I found most

questionable – though to be fair, the authors fully disclosed that the tool was not empirically-

based but rather designed for fun. It was a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, but I found that its

results were far off the results I have typically received in taking the Myers-Briggs in a more

empirically-based format. This test found that I was an ISFP, which clashes somewhat
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significantly with the ENFP results I received just this summer in taking the test. Some of the

discrepancy could have been that I was exhausted at the end of a long day with lots of social

interaction; on an assessment as short as this one, the results could easily be swayed by

counfounding variables such as momentary social exhaustion. For that reason, I will want to be

aware as a practicing counselor using assessment of these variables and try to account for them

when examining results with clients.

Conclusion

Career assessments, such as interest inventories and aptitudinal assessments among

others, can play a valuable role in career or career-focused counseling. These measures can help

make clients aware of careers that might be of interest to them, and can also be a way for the

counselor to begin a conversation with their client about their personal beliefs regarding self and

work. As with any counseling technique, theory or strategy, counselors should be careful when

using these tools so as to not overrepresent the scope of their meaning, and processing of results

is a necessary component of the assessment process in career counseling. Furthermore,

assessment tool selection should be done deliberately so as to account for developmental,

educational, and sociocultural factors that could act as confounding variables in an individual’s

assessment results. When these criterion are met, however, assessment has the chance to be a

significantly powerful – though not totally authoritative – piece of career counseling.


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References

Kennedy, R., & Kennedy, D. (2004). Using the myers-briggs type indicator® in career

counseling. Journal of Employment Counseling, 41(1), 38-44. doi:10.1002/j.2161-

1920.2004.tb00876.x

Bubic, A. (2017). The relevance of self-evaluations for students' career optimism. Journal of

Employment Counseling, 54(3), 100-114. doi:10.1002/joec.12059

Harrington, T., & Long, J. (2013). The history of interest inventories and career assessments in

career counseling. The Career Development Quarterly, 61(1), 83-92. doi:10.1002/j.2161-

0045.2013.00039.x

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