Incorporating career assessment into career counselling

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Career assessment has long held a central place in career counselling since the work of Parsons (1909) signalled the birth of a new field of practice, vocational guidance, and its subsequent iterations of career guidance and counselling and more recently life designing. Designed to assist individuals with their career decision making, career assessment provides data or information that assists career exploration and selfexploration (de Bruin & de Bruin, 2006; Sampson, 2009). Hartung (2010) contends that career assessment is founded in three trends evident in the field, specifically: (1) the measurement of individual differences emanating from the work of Parsons; (2) an emphasis on life-span development typified in the work of Super (1957); and (3) contemporary postmodern views on career reflected in life-designing (Savickas, et al., 2009), narrative and constructivist approaches (Maree, 2007; McMahon & Patton, 2006). Of these trends, assessment reflecting constructivist principles is also evident in Parsons’ legacy to the field as well as the long tradition of assessment based on the measurement of individual differences. Thus it may be concluded that Parsons has contributed a dual legacy to career assessment (McMahon & Patton, 2006; Patton & McMahon, 2014).