Career Development
Career Development tests how people choose, adjust to, and move through work across the lifespan, plus how to select and interpret career assessments.
Theories to know
- Trait-and-factor (Parsons): match traits to occupational requirements.
- Holland's RIASEC: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional. Key constructs: congruence (person–environment fit), differentiation (distinct profile), consistency (adjacent types), and identity (clarity of interests).
- Super's life-span, life-space: growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance, decline; careers express self-concept; life roles (child, student, worker, citizen, homemaker, leisurite) form the career rainbow.
- Gottfredson's circumscription and compromise: self-concept narrows occupational options by gender and prestige, then interests are compromised.
- Krumboltz's social learning theory: genetic endowment, environment, learning experiences, and task-approach skills; happenstance and planned serendipity.
- Savickas: career adaptability and life design.
Assessment
Interest inventories (Strong Interest Inventory, Self-Directed Search) measure interests, not abilities; the O*NET replaced the Dictionary of Occupational Titles as the occupational database. Work values (Super) matter as much as interests in decision quality.
Worked example
A client's SDS profile is Social–Enterprising–Artistic with low Realistic. The reasoning: congruent environments involve people, persuasion, and creativity - teaching, sales, counseling, public relations - while Realistic-heavy jobs (machine operation, agriculture) are a poor fit. Present options and note that an interest inventory is not an aptitude test.
Traps that cost marks
Treating interest scores as ability or as destiny; interpreting profiles without considering culture, family pressure, and labor-market reality; ignoring developmental stage; and using single-session trait matching when the client is in exploration.