Career Assessment Tool

Assessment: Phase 1- Return to Main Assessment Tool Page

Career Assessments
The career assessments mentioned here are subjective assessments, meaning they are based on a person's own view and life experience. They are not objective or measurement-based like the SAT or other college admission tests. All of these assessments need to be administered by a career professional.

Myers - Briggs (MBTI)
The Myers-Briggs is a well-known vocational assessment based on Carl Jung's psychological type theory. It shows you how you prefer to take in information, how you are energized, how you prefer to make decisions, and whether you enjoy being in structured or open-ended situations. Millions of people have taken this assessment, which is considered to be about 85-90 percent accurate.

Campbell and Strong
The Campbell and Strong are separate but similar vocational assessments. They are useful for people who don't have a clear career direction. Both assessments ask you about your career interests and skills to rate how you would like or dislike being in the jobs and careers listed on the test. Your answers are compared with answers of people who are in these occupations, and at the end of the test many possible occupations are listed indicating whether you have a strong, medium or low interest in them, information that you can use to decide on what careers or jobs you want to investigate further.

The Strong uses the Holland Code and classifies careers into categories including Social (teaching, social work, helping occupations), Artistic (creative, arts, performing arts), Enterprising (leaders, managers, business owners), Conventional (traditional office jobs), Realistic (outdoors) and Investigative (scientific, medical, analytical types of occupations). You end up with a three-letter code, which corresponds to the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, which shows you descriptions for all types of occupations with this code. The Campbell has a similar set-up but goes into more detail about a person's strengths and preferences.

A career counselor is a counselor with a master's in career development or a general field of counseling, or a master's in marriage and family therapy, with a specialized training or certificate in career counseling. There are also vocational counselors with a master's in vocational rehabilitation counseling who specialize in workers who have been injured or have a disability and need to be retrained to re-enter the work force. Some career counselors have taken tests or received certifications from a national board. Fees range from $50 to $125 an hour for counselors in private practice. Lower fees are often charged by nonprofits such as the YWCA. You can often get free or low-cost career counseling if you are a student at a community college or university. Also you can often receive special rates through your college alumni association.

In California you can find a career counselor through the California Registry at (714) 284-8857. Or you can call the California Career Development Association at (714) 871-6460. In addition, you can find career counselors at local nonprofit career centers, at local community colleges or universities and through national associations including the American Counseling Association. You can find career counselors in the Yellow Pages and on the Web.

Take an interactive journey to discover your greatest strengths, learn about new career options and build the steps to reach your goals.

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