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Career development assessment tools have become popular because they can help individuals make informed career decisions by identifying their skills, values, interests and preferences. Some of these tools can be used individually and are usually widely accessible. Other specialized assessments are administered by a trained counsellor who can assist an individual with interpreting the results and providing additional guidance.
Although career assessments are a good starting point, these tools also have limitations. By understanding the potential risks of using career assessments and identifying other ways for jobseekers to develop their self-knowledge, career professionals can mitigate potential negative impacts of using these tools on clients’ career decision-making.
Bias in career assessments
Career assessments may not be reliable or accurate enough to capture the complexity and diversity of human beings. For example, these tools may not reflect the user’s cultural and personal background, affecting the fairness and relevance of results. Cultural and social norms affect how test-takers understand and interpret the wording of questions. How they make sense of the assessment can be influenced by their values, beliefs, experiences, communication patterns, teaching and learning styles, and epistemologies of their cultures and societies. Depending on who designed the assessment, it can have a Western influence or influences from other cultures. These influences may contribute to results (e.g. suggested careers) that do not resonate with people from different backgrounds or perspectives.
Stereotype bias is also another concern when using a career assessment tool. Factors such as age, race, gender and education may affect the suggested career opportunities. In addition, external factors such as socioeconomic, geographic and economic environments that affect the individual may not be properly represented in the career assessment. As a result, these tests may not offer the best suggestions, leading individuals to be more confused and uncertain about their career options. When used as a hiring or career advancement tool, the prejudices in assessments can create barriers for candidates or employees.
“These tools may not reflect the user’s cultural and personal background, affecting the fairness and relevance of results.”
Culturally aware assessment practices may allow career professionals to obtain important cultural information about clients to understand their worldviews. Culturally aware assessment may also allow career professionals to identify any potential cultural barriers such as communication and expression of emotions.
Career professionals should be knowledgeable about a client’s culture, differentiate between an unfamiliar cultural norm and a pathology, and consider culture during the process. Assessments can help supplement information from other sources to help make the best career decision.
How career assessments can affect career choices
Cultural bias is not the only limitation of using assessments. When individuals use career assessments without adequate guidance, challenges can arise. For instance, they might come to believe that the choices suggested by an assessment are the only career options available to them. The individual might think that the career assessment knows them better than they do. However, if these tools inaccurately assess an individual’s knowledge and ability, they may be denied access to educational and career opportunities they presumed would be a good fit. Also, assessments can quickly become outdated. Depending on the needs and skills of the workforce, the availability of jobs can change.
When individuals rely on assessments results to determine their career decisions, they may:
- End up in careers where they have less impact than they otherwise could: missing options that aren’t obvious, neglecting relevant considerations, continuing in low-impact paths for long periods, and misjudging impact in terms of chances of success and where skills are most useful.
- End up in less satisfying careers than they could: missing plausibly good options, misjudging or missing the factors relevant to satisfaction and being reluctant to leave a job despite it not being enjoyable.
Bringing the career picture into focus
Career professionals can support clients to make more informed and appropriate career decisions by incorporating other knowledge sources and strategies. For instance, jobseekers can:
- Conduct informational interviews with industry professionals
- Use multiple career assessment tools, paired with doing their own research into career options
- Look at their strengths and weaknesses and what they value in a workplace
- Broaden their cross-cultural understanding by building a diverse network
- Be systematic: list the factors relevant to their career decision making
- Learn from mistakes, and reflect on whether they are staying on a path because it’s consistent with their previous experience
- Take a more evidence-based approach: identify predictors of their success and job satisfaction
While not intentionally discriminatory, career assessments tend to box individuals into narrow career options. Humans are more complex than just one assessment; however, using multiple career assessments can provide different perspectives to inform people’s career decision making. In addition, rather than using the results of an assessment in order to predict a person’s career, it could be more helpful for career counsellors to gain an understanding of different cultures and their understanding of careers.
