Career Assessment Tools: Evaluating Online Job Guidance
This paper critically evaluates several career assessment resources available to students, recent graduates, and job seekers, with a focus on state-sponsored online tools. The author examines Maryland's CareerNet website, the MyFuture.com Work Interest Quiz, Arizona State University's Skills Assessment, and a state-operated Career Stop center. Each resource is assessed for usability, question quality, and actual effectiveness in guiding users toward appropriate career paths. The paper finds significant shortcomings across all platforms — including broken links, biased content, irrelevant questions, and superficial counseling — and concludes with recommendations for designing a more effective, integrated career assessment program.
- Introduction: The Need for Career Assessment: Why career assessment tools matter for jobseekers
- Maryland's CareerNet and the GET Process: Overview and critique of Maryland's state career portal
- MyFuture.com: The Work Interest Quiz: Analysis of a military-linked online career quiz
- Arizona State University Skills Assessment: Evaluation of ASU's STEPS self-discovery model
- The Career Stop Center: A Hidden Temp Service: Phone interview reveals Career Stop's superficial methods
- Designing an Effective Career Assessment Program: Recommendations for a better career assessment model
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper uses firsthand investigation — including a telephone interview with a Career Stop representative — to ground its critiques in primary research rather than abstract theory alone.
- It maintains a consistent evaluative lens across all four resources reviewed, making comparisons clear and the argument easy to follow.
- The author balances analytical criticism with constructive recommendations, ending with a proposed model for improvement rather than simply cataloguing failures.
Key academic technique demonstrated
This paper demonstrates comparative evaluation as an academic technique. The author applies a consistent set of criteria — usability, question relevance, practical utility, and accessibility — to each career assessment resource in turn. This parallel structure allows readers to draw direct comparisons between tools, and it builds the paper's central argument incrementally: that no single existing resource is adequate, making a synthesized ideal model necessary.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a broad introduction establishing why career assessment matters and what factors good tools should address. It then moves through four specific case evaluations in sequence: Maryland's CareerNet portal, the MyFuture.com quiz, Arizona State University's online skills assessment, and a state Career Stop center. Each section identifies specific strengths and weaknesses. The final section synthesizes findings into a set of design recommendations for an ideal career assessment program, giving the paper a clear problem-to-solution arc.
Introduction: The Need for Career Assessment
There are many resources available to students, recent graduates, and working professionals seeking employment. Many schools provide job-placement assistance to help students find work in their chosen fields of study. Many institutions today focus on career training rather than the arts and humanities, serving to prepare people for real-world jobs and place them onto business career paths. For those not attending school, employment agencies and career centers can help find a new job or facilitate a switch between professions. Recruiting groups can additionally be hired by either companies or individuals seeking employment to make the ideal match.
However, it is important that one understands what line of work is the most appropriate choice before committing to a profession that may guide the rest of one's life. Attempting to find a career in an area that is poorly suited to the individual can lead to serious consequences. In an attempt to help people discover what course of study to pursue in college, or to guide workforce members in choosing the best job, career assessment tests have become a widely used tool. These tests, developed by school guidance counselors, career training experts, and various organizations, can take a wide variety of factors into consideration in order to provide suggestions for the person taking the test. These factors may include personality, aptitude, values, likes, dislikes, and training. Unfortunately, these tests do not always reach their potential, and it is important for a career counseling center to carefully consider the elements included in its chosen assessment tools.
Maryland's CareerNet and the GET Process
One state-sponsored career assessment tool can be found online at Maryland's CareerNet website, maintained by the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation (DLLR). This site utilizes its own "GET Process," which is a simplified version of the Career Development Model produced by the Maryland State Department of Education. The three steps of this process are Gathering Information, Exploring Careers, and Taking Action. Career assessment takes place during the first and second steps, leading to the action taken in the third.
This site is, unfortunately, very poorly designed, with broken links, amateurish graphics, difficult navigation, and little to no actual content. The "assistance" provided by the site is essentially a set of links to external websites that have been minimally — if at all — reviewed by the DLLR for useful content.
MyFuture.com: The Work Interest Quiz
The first CareerNet link followed was to the MyFuture website (http://www.myfuture.com). The first notable feature of this site is that it is strongly pro-military while attempting to present itself as an unbiased resource — a form of subtle propaganda that is undeniably in poor taste. The Career Toolbox section includes assistance with résumé and cover letter writing, interview preparation, additional military-oriented content, and quizzes. The Work Interest Quiz is the main career assessment activity.
The quiz consists of 60 statements, each with a check box. If any of the listed activities align with the quiz-taker's interests, they are to be marked. As the site instructs: "Just check the box next to any of the activities that you like to do. When you are finished, press 'Done' and you'll be given the two out of six work types that will most likely fit with the kind of person you are. Then go ahead and click on them to discover typical occupations (also military counterparts) represented in that work type." (My Future) The disclaimer notes that this is a sample version of the ASVAB test available in many high schools.
The questions are not well thought out and offer limited practical guidance. Many are so generalized that they cannot meaningfully direct a person toward a specific career path — for example, the statement "Help your business grow." Regardless of one's profession, most people want their work to be successful and their earnings to grow. Other questions are so specific that the quiz becomes redundant: "Take a course in car engine repair" rather obviously suggests an interest in automotive work, and "Be a file clerk" essentially answers itself. If a respondent checks that box, no further assessment is necessary.
After completing all applicable boxes, the program is supposed to identify the two most relevant work styles for the user's interests. Ironically, it returned the full list of all six options, rendering the time spent on 60 questions entirely unproductive. The six styles listed are Realistic, Social, Investigative, Conventional, Enterprising, and Artistic — each accompanied, of course, by a full list of relevant military careers.
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