The Career Assessment & Exploration Process
| What they are meant to do… | What they are not meant to do… |
| Provide insight into how your unique interest patterns, personality, values, skills and abilities can help you best fit into the world of work | Tell you definitively what you will be good at doing |
| Supplement the career counseling and/or independent self-assessment / exploration process by helping you understand yourself better | Guarantee or promise that any career path or occupation will be ideal, exciting or completely satisfactory |
| Allow you to connect directly with or plug your results directly into a variety of tools online to further explore various careers | Precisely direct you to the exact career path or occupation to choose |
| Guide you to more information and resources that can ultimately help you make well informed career decisions | Provide all the answers you need to make your decisions. For a more complete picture, you need to interact and conduct informational interviews with people either working in or who are knowledgeable about your career field(s) of interest. |
Below are a number of popular assessments and exploration resources. Many times, their results pose more questions than expected. Career counseling can provide a way to make more sense of them. Remember, even if you start off with a more independent self-assessment and exploration approach, you are always welcome and encouraged to connect with the career counselor to discuss your results, options and decisions!
Assessments Used in Individual Career Counseling*
The Strong Interest Inventory® Assessment (SII)
• Assesses interests in a broad range of occupations, work and leisure activities, and educational subjects
• Helps you relate your unique interest patterns to those of satisfied workers within various occupations
• Brings more focus to occupations and activities in which you would most likely find interesting
• Includes the College Profile and Interpretive Report to further enhance career and self-exploration
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® Assessment (MBTI)
• Helps you determine your unique personality type, typical behavioral patterns and personal styles
• Examines your type preferences, interaction styles and your areas of strength and potential growth
• Provides you the opportunity to explore careers best suited to their type preferences
• Includes the Career Report to help you further focus your career exploration
*Contact Career Services at 704-290-5846 / careerservices@spcc.edu to take the Strong and/or MBTI. Since they are controlled psychological instruments, the results of the Strong and MBTI assessments can only be released during a scheduled interpretation session with a qualified career counselor. A small fee will be assessed for non-curriculum students that take these assessments.
Assessments and Resources for a More Independent Career Exploration Process
Self Directed Search (SDS)
• Describes Holland’s personality types (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional)
• Determines your 3-letter code (a combination of the 3 RIASEC types) most closely matching your interests
• Helps you identify occupations, fields of study, and leisure activities consistent with your 3-letter code
• Suggests next steps for you to follow in your career exploration and decision-making process
Fee based online version with a more in depth report available at the official SDS site: http://self-directed-search.com/
College Foundation of North Carolina (CFNC)
• Offers a variety of free self-assessment tools that aid in career exploration.
• Visit www.CFNC.org. First time users should select Create My CFNC Account
• Hover over Plan and choose For a Career
• Complete the various assessments to discover more about yourself and explore career paths
Websites for Occupational Information and Exploration
Bureau of Labor Statistics - Occupational Outlook Handbook
• Search occupations by Search box or A-Z Index
O*Net Online
• Enter Find Occupations to research occupations in many ways
