How A

Career Assessment

Test Works

You’re after your dream job but

can’t quite put your finger on what

job that is??

Hey, computers seem intelligent these days. Maybe they can find it for me?

Great Idea......

How do they do that?

That’s a bit more difficult to explain!

Occupations

Magic

Magic

Magic Magic Happening Here!!

Questions Answers

What is this

magic you speak

of ??

First some background..........

Most of the more popular career assessment tests are based on the theory of John Holland who

created 6 personality types

Investigative / Thinkers

Social / Helpers

Artistic / Creators

Enterprising / Persuaders

Conventional / Organisers

Realistic / Doers

People Jobs Personality

Types

The basic theory is.... ‘If you have a personality type similar to people of a particular job type then that job type will probably be a good match for you’

Let’s dive deeper into the most

popular career assessment test

The Strong Interest Inventory (SII)

291 Questions

For each question you must choose one of five responses

Strongly Dislike

Dislike

Indifferent

Like

Strongly like

260 Occupations Well, effectively only 130 as they split male and female jobs

People in each occupation have also taken the 291 questionnaire to build up

a profile of responses for each particular

occupation

In order to participate, people from each

occupation must meet 3 criteria

•They could not indicate any degree of dissatisfaction with their work.

•They must have had at least three years of

experience on the job.

•They must have been at least 18 years of age.

So...

If your answers to the 291 questions are somewhat similar to those answers from people in a

specific occupation then given that these people are not dissatisfied

with their occupation and have been in that occupation for over 3 years then there is a good chance that you will also find a decent level of satisfaction in the same occupation.

Happy with that ??

Errr.....Excuse me please. Just a few questions ?

1. How happy are these people that took the questionnaire with their occupations?

2. Who are these people that took the questionnaire for specific occupations?

3. Of all the people that took the questionnaire for a given occupation, surely they couldn’t have answered the 291 questions in the same manner?

4. If they didn’t answer the questions in the same manner then how is ‘an occupation’ defined in terms of responses to the 291 questions?

1. How happy are these people that took the

questionnaire with their occupations?

No idea. All we know is that they have been in

their occupation for over three years and have not expressed dissatisfaction

with that occupation.

2. Who are these people that took the

questionnaire for specific occupations?

The Strong Interest Inventory Manual Supplement provides details on the number of people (who took the

questionnaire) for each occupation, the year the data was collected, the

average age of those taking the survey and the average number of years that

people had been in that particular occupation

Example data for the ‘Accountant’ occupation

3. Of all the people that took the questionnaire

for a given occupation, surely they couldn’t

have answered the 291 questions in the same

manner?

They didn’t. However, what is interesting is that there are some definitive patterns of

answers for people in the same occupation. This brings us to

the 4th question.

4. If they didn’t answer the questions in the

same manner then how is ‘an occupation’

defined in terms of responses to the 291

questions?

Essentially the responses of people in a specific occupation are compared with

responses from those of a general sample (called the General Representative Sample – currently consists of 2250 individuals).

The way in which the responses differ for those in the specific occupation is deemed to be characteristic of that occupation

Awesome....

I get it now

I still have one more question though.....

How do you evaluate the

effectiveness of such a career

assessment test ?

Let’s find a bunch of people who took the test and then chose an occupation

based on that test and find out whether they are still in that occupation and how

satisfied they are with it?

One Problem.....

That could take years !!

The effectiveness is usually measured by

testing the ability to predict occupations

that people will eventually enter.

Simply put.....

Get people in certain occupations to take

the test and see if their occupation (or one

similar to it) gets the highest score.

Shawn Michael Miller (Dr of Philosophy, Washington State

University), looked at the history of this testing

A ‘Good Hit’ is when an individual’s current occupation matched one of their three highest occupation scores (scoring greater than 45 for that occupation)

A ‘Direct Match’ means that occupation scored on the survey was ‘exactly’ the same as the person’s actual occupation.

An ‘Indirect Match’ required some inference by the researcher (i.e. we can take that to mean that the occupation scored on the survey was somewhat similar in definition to the person’s actual occupation).

Some definitions to help.......

The results.....

So about 50% of the time the Strong Interest Inventory (SII) did identify a person’s occupation (or one similar to it) as one of the highest scoring occupations for that person.

Summary.....

The top Career Assessment Tests have had a significant amount of time, money and effort poured into them over the years to make them as useful as

possible.

A career assessment test continues to be a valuable asset in providing career guidance to individuals, but it is important to understand exactly what you are

getting.

Iandboreham.com

Solving Daily Life

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