Career Satisfaction and the Importance of Asking Questions.

How did you choose your current profession? Chances are, it wasn't just an accident. Your decision (or series of decisions) was most likely influenced by your interests, skills, values, personality characteristics, capabilities, role models, knowledge, and risk-taking behavior--as well as by chance. Career counselors or coaches--as many of us are now called-- use a variety of assessments to help clients make career decisions consistent with their core beliefs. This column briefly explains the most frequently used measures.

The U.S. Army pioneered the use of assessments in the 1930s after observing that randomly assigning recruits to military responsibilities was ineffective. Hence, the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) and many subsequent iterations were developed to direct new members of the military to occupational assignments and training somewhat in line with their measured capabilities. Still, these early assessments share with recently developed tests an inability to completely predict happiness or fit in a career. That's why career counselors use a combination of assessments, thoughtful interpretation and analysis, a theoretical background, and knowledge of the marketplace and emerging occupational possibilities.

Lifestyle Assessments

A counselor or coach might start by taking down a thorough history, noting socioeconomic background, role models, education, and job history. She might ask about role models in your life, including your parents' occupations, their lifestyle, and your childhood ambitions. Career Anchors, by Edgar Schein of MIT, is a useful tool for evaluating the strength of one's motivation for a given kind of work, using the metaphor of an anchor that holds one secure to a substrate of beliefs.

Values

I've used many lists and exercises to help people prioritize their work values. Sometimes I even conduct an auction in which the client spends theoretical dollars on opportunities to apply deep-seated values in the workplace. Examples would be opportunities to help society, assist individuals in trouble, make money, be an expert, or live an adventure. My favorite way of assessing values is the Career Values Card Sort, designed by Richard Knowdell in 1996. Clients sort the work values on a scale from "always valued" to "never valued," Often, there is a dramatic difference between values honored by a client's current work and those needed for his or her ideal work.

Interests

The most widely used measures of work interest are the Strong Interest Inventory (formerly Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory), published by Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc., and a short version of the Self-Directed Search. Both tests are based on the Holland Hexagon of six occupational-interest areas: realistic (R), investigative (I), artistic (A), social (S), enterprising (E), and conventional (C). The combination of two or three of these interests is tied to job coding in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, making it possible to identify occupations consistent with those of other people who exhibit similar interest patterns. For example, a person with an IRC code might have career interests similar to those of a nuclear-fuels research engineer, a radiopharmacist, an aeronautical drafter, a soil conservation technician, a toxicologist, or a laboratory assistant--with differences partly based on level of education. Someone with an ESA code might be interested in becoming the managing editor of a n ewspaper, a judge, a politician, a social welfare administrator, a medical social worker, a nursery manager, or a sporting-goods salesperson.

Skills

Skills are developed through natural capabilities, life experiences, successes, and failures; or they might be interests made concrete. Skills learned or developed in one environment may well be transferred to another. The identification of possible transitions is where career counseling or coaching becomes more an art than a science. One approach is SkillScan, developed by Beckhusen/Gazzano in 1993. This assessment tool develops a personal skill profile using another card sort exercise to discern a pattern of skills from the following categories: humanitarian, communication, leadership/management, mental/analytical, mental/creative, creative expression, and physical.

If you're noticing overlaps between values, interests, and skills, you're right. Sometimes redundancy creates a depth of insight not otherwise accessible.

Personality

Career counselors and coaches are typically more interested in possibilities than pathology, so we frequently use the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) with our clients. This assessment tool also is widely used in team building, college roommate selection, communications training, and marriage counseling, to name just a few applications. In a forced-choice test of 92 or 120 questions, participants' preferences are sorted on four scales. The scores indicate the following preferences:

source of personal energy--extraversion (E) or introversion (I);

source of information intake--sensory (S) or intuition (N);

style of decision making--thinking (T) or feeling (F); and

lifestyle orientation--organized judgement (I) or flexible perception (P).

While anyone can do almost anything with enough education, skill, and effort, many workers are unhappy because they work far outside their preferences. For example, an ISTJ client might be unhappy working as a receptionist in a busy office with little responsibility other than directing calls. Introverts typically dislike interruptions, sensory types like detail, thinking types prefer logical decision making, and judgement types enjoy control and seeing projects through. Obviously referencing this typology for career development is complex, so clients should refer to career counselors or coaches who are trained and certified in applying the MBTI to workplace situations.

Take Advantage of the Options

Many other assessments are available today, from paper and pencil tests that take 20 minutes to week-long seminars for people seeking a deeper understanding of themselves in their work and their personal lives. What a shame that some folks never ask.

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