3.2: The Components of Career Assessment

Donald Super (1985) proposed a model for career assessment. He believed that what counsellors do in the beginning is a preview. He suggested that the next step was to go into a depth view.

The Preview Phase

In Donald Super’s theory, “preview” refers to the initial exploration and exposure to various career options during childhood and adolescence. It involves learning about different occupations, interests, and skills.

During the preview stage, individuals gather information about potential career paths. They might explore hobbies, participate in extracurricular activities, or engage in discussions with family members, teachers, and peers. This early exposure helps shape their understanding of different vocations and contributes to their self-concept and aspirations.

According to Super, a positive preview experience can lead to informed career decisions later in life. It allows individuals to develop preferences and identify areas of interest.

The preview phase is parallel to the initiation phase. Dr. Kris Magnussen (1992) explains that the initiation phase focuses on establishing a relationship with the client and identifying their needs. It involves creating a mutual understanding between the counsellor and the client about what they seek and hope to achieve through the counselling process.

During initiation, the counsellor works to build rapport, gain trust, and clarify the client’s goals and expectations. This stage sets the foundation for the entire counselling process by ensuring that both the client and the counsellor are on the same page.

After the preview stage, Super suggested that the next step was to go into a depth view.  For Super, the “depth view” represents a deeper understanding of a specific career or occupation. It occurs during adolescence and early adulthood.

The Depth View Phase

As individuals move beyond the preview stage, they focus on specific career paths. They explore their chosen field in greater detail, considering factors such as job requirements, educational qualifications, and lifestyle implications. The depth view involves researching specific occupations, gaining practical experience, and developing a more realistic perspective.

Developing an in-depth view helps individuals make informed decisions about their career trajectory. It allows them to assess whether a particular occupation aligns with their abilities, values, and long-term goals.

The depth view includes an exploration of career values, career change readiness, skills assessment, and interest clarification.  When we as career professionals move the process from initiation or preview to exploration or depth view, it helps us understand what we are trying to accomplish.

The difference between initiation and exploration lies in the intention of the strategy. In initiation, we think about the client’s needs and their importance to the client. Exploration, on the other hand, is much more about what types of things a client can do to meet those needs. In our opening story, when the career coach first met with Jordan, they identified the challenge of school and Jordan’s lack of motivation. During the exploration process, Jordan explored their artistic interests and skills in depth, leading to a renewed desire to pursue their natural strengths as part of their educational journey.

To address the process of exploration, we then need to embark on an assessment strategy. There are typically two approaches to addressing this exploration and assessment process. The approaches are quantitative assessment, which tends to be formal like personality tests, and an arguably more robust qualitative assessment, which is an informal approach where an in-depth career conversation with clients gathers more information than a test.

Regardless of whether we approach assessment from a quantitative or qualitative standpoint, the goal remains the same: to inform the client about who they are as a person and what aspects of who they are as a person would be beneficial in helping them understand themselves in relationship to the world of work. The most common areas we seek to assess are skills, interests, values, beliefs, and possibly character or personality traits. The idea is to help the client understand these aspects of self and then identify opportunities within the world of work to which these aspects of self can be matched.

Remember that this assessment process does not tell us who the client will be, rather, it identifies who they are in the moment. In other words, it’s a snapshot in time. In the next sections, we will take some time to review the differences between the quantitative and qualitative assessment processes.