Career Assessment in a Time of Changing Roles, Relationships, and Contexts

Abstract

Given emerging roles, relationships, and contexts for career service delivery, we speculate that career assessment will increasingly focus on determining readiness for career problem solving and decision making. These changes will enable career shoppers (persons previewing career materials or services before committing to them) and career helpers (persons with varied training and skills providing career assistance) to make collaborative decisions about self-help, brief staff-assisted, or individual case-managed career services. Both individual capability and situational complexity will be assessed in determining readiness, and career theories will be used to review and structure the variables involved in readiness assessment. Career helpers working directly and indirectly with career shoppers in new service delivery contexts will play varied roles in mediating the career assessment process. The Internet will enable career shoppers to directly participate in comprehensive career assessment. Implications for the nature of career assessments, costs, requisite skills and licenses for administration, and ethical guidelines for use of career assessments are discussed