Instructions: You have been asked to help design a career assessment program for your customers. What are one or two assessments [formal or informal] you would use with your customers? Make one original post and then respond to one classmate’s post. You will make a total of two posts.
Remember that our learning group works in a full-value environment: We treat our colleagues with respect and professionalism. Our comments should reflect this culture.
Identify your soft skills Assessment.
This assessment is following an informal format. The goal is to help clients identify soft skills that are transferable across industries .
Name :
Age :
One Favorite personal quality:
1. Are you motivated by winning or the fear of losing? Tell me why.
2. Describe a time you fell behind schedule. What went wrong and what would you do differently next time?
3. What is your biggest concern when starting a new job ?
4. Do you enjoy working with people?
5. What environment do you believe you will work best in slow-paced / fast-paced?
These are great questions to understand the individual’s motivations, fears, and anxieties, and to better understand how a person approaches the workday. I might phrase question 3 about working with people as “Tell me more about your experience working with people. Did you like it/enjoy it?” I think working with people is a broad area. It would be helpful to know more – for example – customer service in a call center is different than providing home health services. I like your list of questions. Your questions touch on the soft skills necessary for employment and are transferrable to many different occupations and industries.
Hi Ashley,
I appreciate your inventiveness, and the questions you’ve brought are quite beneficial. According to my Job Seeker Consultant, these questions can help us uncover several strengths and faults in a consumer. For example, your second question regarding going behind schedule might help me establish why he would need some assistance in developing time management skills or the significance of working as a team to complete projects and meet deadlines. I also appreciate question 4 since it will assist the Job Seeker consultant to match the consumer to jobs based on their personality. A person who suffers from social anxiety might be better suited to working alone rather than providing customer service. Excellent post!
My assessment strategy would be both formal and informal. My assessment strategy would start as informal, asking the job seeker about his or her employment history and education. Part of my questioning would be to ask for more additional details about why they made the decisions they made. If the job seeker identified a career field/occupation, I would find out why and how he decided on that area. This will allow me to develop rapport and learn more about the decision-making process the job seeker uses. Next, I would like to move to a career inventory based on interests. A couple of interest-based assessments are Do What You Are and My Next Move. Both are quick assessments. This would help narrow down an occupational interest area. Finally, I would like to find industry-specific assessments for aptitude, skills, and abilities to better predict the likelihood someone will be successful in that field. If the test could also be linked to local labor market information this would be a bonus. Ultimately, it would be helpful to know how people fit into the local labor market’s demands with their interests, skills, and abilities.
I like your suggestion for mixing both formal and informal assessments, and going more in depth with their educational and employment history. Asking why they chose their major, field, or job allows them to open up more and builds rapport. If the customer in interested in training, I will definitely ask the questions have you identified your career field/occupation, and why you chose it.
When working with JFES clients I would like use more regularly the O*NET interest profiler , and My Next Move to the assessment process. After completion we can go over the results, and go over the different career and educational opportunities that match their Holland work personality Code. This can help them find what they may be interested in, when trying to choose a training program, and career path. As I continue to work with the participants and build rapport I can use the informal assessment The Compass Activity. First question is when you are given a work project, what style do you use to approach the project? They need to select their predominant style. After the style has been recognized it allows the clients to think of their 4 strengths of their working style, their weaknesses, which work style you would have difficulty with, and what you want them to know about you. This could help narrow down the type of career they want to get into.
Thank you for your feedback. I agree using a combination of both informal and formal assessments can provide more insight into the client’s needs and circumstances. The goal is to get as much information as possible to offer the best resources that align with assessment results and the client’s concerns. As a Jfes Consultant using the Onet internet profiler allows the client to identify their interests along with their non-interests to create realistic goals in education and career fields.
As a WIOA Job Seeker Consultant, I would use both formal and informal. I always start the strategy assessment informal asking the job seeker about his or her last employment history, then education. Most of the job seeker that I meet wants training or a career change. I want to know why. I need to know more details. O’NET interest profiler helps to what kinds of careers the job seeker might want to explore. Another assessment is my Next Move to help them discover the type of work activities and Occupations in which they can be successful.
Hi Zaida,
I am glad your customers come to you knowing what it is they want, and you don’t have to do much of a guessing game with them. Are you able to give me some more information on the Next Move assessment? I am not familiar with that one.
All your opinions are exceptional. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I totally agree to use both forms of evaluation, both formal and informal, since it meets the needs of each client and that is the objective of being able to provide them with the best services and help them to develop and move forward professionally.
As a coordinator I don’t use assessments directly, but my participants do need to complete the assessments in order to participate in the different offerings that the AJC has to offer. I would definitely use a combinations of both the formal and informal assessments. One of my first questions to my customers is, how is it that I can help you? I ask this question because not everyone wants or needs my assistance. The program I run is referral based, so I don’t always get individuals who are willing to come in a be assessed. Next I usually go what kind of training are they interested in? their availability? and is there any barriers that would prohibit them from going into trainings? Of course I ask about education and work history. After I compile a list, I speak to them about casas and traitifiy assessments’.
I like the questions you ask because they are direct and straight to the point. Do you typically follow up with the clients after they take the casas and traitify assessment? Also, one way to ensure a costumers buy in is to explain the time commitment versus what they will gain access to it in the end.
My dream assessment would be an assessment that measures both skills/abilities/ and interest. We currently use a separate formal assessment to measure math and reading comprehension and what soft skills they may have. We use an informal assessment to look at their interested career and work history to see what skills and experience they already possess. I would love a one stop shop for an assessment something that would measure math and reading, soft skills and what jobs they are interested in versus what they have experience they have.
Maybe we can’t have a one stop assessment, but a set of assessments that’s covers all the basis and views the client as a whole. I see it more as a process. One assessment is done and then the next would be determined until enough “data” is collected for the client to make a decision. Math and reading would continue via CASAS. We have Traitify to determine interests. I’ve had the experience where clients are still undecided even after taking Traitify. We can dive deeper by administering a work value assessment to help the client identify what really matters to them. Additionally, an abilities or skills inventory can be done to ensure that the customer’s identified career goal is a good match. This may not be necessary for all clients as well. Some may not need the extent of all available assessments.
acastro, you have a point in saying that not all participants need the extent of all available assessments. I’ve found that most participants get what they need regarding career choices through O*NET or Traitify. If we move into the next level–training–then there’s CASAS. I do, however encourage them to look at other employment assessments online, such as My Next Move, if they don’t agree with Traitify.
I use formal and informal assessments. I use two formal assessments O*NET and Tratify, which participants respond positively to. I enjoy these assessments because it gives the participants a straight, no-nonsense look at potential employment and what skills are needed, while the other causes them to consider careers they’d never thought about. The informal is our conversation during an intake, where I attempt to find out more about the participant by asking about their employment background, their families and education.
dartis, I too, would like to see something that measures soft skills. I believe it would give better insight when exploring whether or not someone is the right candidate for different training programs.
In reading the above, I like that both informal and formal assessments are being utilized to best serve our customers. I think knowing skills and interests together work best in finding suitable and fulfilling career goals. I believe there is an inventory that does skills and interests – will explore further.
In my role I don’t administer assessments but I am very invested in what they tell us about our clients and our team. As an organization we use Traitify and I am also a huge fan of the O’Net Inventory. I believe we should continue to research and implement assessment tools that help us guide our customers into the right career pathways that suit their skills and interests.
I would utilize a combination of informal and formal assessments to determine an ideal career assessment program for clients. It’s important to determine what motivates and drives an individual. This can be done informally during intake via conversation or having a structured interview format. Asking open ended questions would allow me to take a deeper dive and really get to know a client. Identifying what motivates an individual can help me determine the type of formal assessments to utilize with each person. I would use a combination of three types of formal assessments so that the individual can make an educated choice on how they’d like to proceed careerwise. I would utilize a work value inventory to determine what is important to them and how this can be translated into a work setting. I would then do a personality inventory to identify possible career matches along with skills inventory to see if any existing skills are transferrable; or identify the ones that will be needed. In addition, an abilities tests can aid an individual who is inquiring if a specific occupation would be right for them. It’s important not to settle into a “cookie cutter” set of assessments or procedures. Everyone’s situation, abilities and values differ. Ensuring to have a variety of assessments available can ensure I cover everyone’s needs and desires when it comes to career planning.
I typically would use a formal assessment to assist participants in career planning. The abilities test helps participants realize their abilities and how they pair the occupations they want to consider. This will start the conversation with the participant going over each occupation and if they have any interest or can see themselves in that occupation. We also will discuss what they liked about their previous job and what they didn’t. This will also help the participant see their patterns of occupations.
I like your reasoning of using the combination of informal and formal assessments. You’re correct in wanting to see what motivates a participant.
These questions are great for identifying a person’s outlook on life and to see how motivated/positive they are with their specific situations. this addresses fears and assumptions that a person makes when viewing the workforce, and more importantly, how they view themselves.
I agree with you Michael. Evaluating how motivated the person is, is just as important of the conversation of training. Maybe the informal assessment will give them a look into their likes and dislikes and what will keep them motivated. Seeing what their strengths, fears and hopes are, is the conversation that should take place, after this assessment. It gives them an idea, or a new idea of something they were not aware of. Learning something new about themselves will open their thinking about different options they may have when seeking employment or training.
The two assessments I would use with my customers would be Traitify Assessment and CASAS (Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System). Traitify assessment is an informal assessment performed as a personality test that helps the customers match their unique skills and life preferences with jobs that suit their personality best. Once the assessment is completed, a list of jobs is provided based on the answers. This is a practical assessment for most of my participants because it helps them look at different options they did not know existed. The other exam I would select is CASAS, a more formal evaluation that measures a customer’s fundamental skills in two areas: reading and math. CASAS addresses common issues concerning people’s lives, jobs, and objectives. CASAS allows me to define my participants’ absolute skill levels and how I may supply them with improved tools depending on their results.
I use an informal and formal assessment. For the “Informal” assessment, Traitify is the one I utilize for the customer. This assessment is a personality assessment, with a description of qualities they find they have, to then match with potential employment. The customer is surprised, not only with the questions, but the outcome of their personality, their traits. They are pleasantly surprised on something they never knew about themselves, and how they can take a new approach when seeking employment. The “Formal” assessment is “CASAS”. This exam is a Basic Reading and Math competency test to determine in which level they are on. The exam is given when a customer desires to begin a specific training and is seeking financial assistance. If the customer does not meet the required scores, they are allowed to re-take the test. The customer is given tools, websites, to be better prepared for the next test.
I didnt know they are allowed to retake the CASAS test if the do not meet the required scores. That is really good to know. I have been learning a lot about the CASAS Test lately as I have been proctoring some of the sessions on Tuesdays…..
I agree with you Carmelita. The CASAS TEST is reliable. A customer is going to do their best on the CASAS TEST because they feel as if it will determine if they “smart or not.” Not my words, a lot of customers have used that statement where I have had to correct them. I also agree with the Traitify, while it does show the interests of the customer, I sometimes fear that customer can just put anything just because they want to hurry and get it over with, some think it is stupid and some think it doesn’t matter. Thanks for sharing.
My dream assessment would be one that catered to youth and entry level employees. I would want it to explore both skills and interest. I would want to use an assessment like Traitify that you can look at pictures or scenarios and see what personality you may have. An assessment that I currently use for skills is just a bunch of transferrable skills on a checklist that my individuals can check off of they apply to them. The problem with this assessment and Traitify is that they are limiting. They don’t really explore practical skills of a teenager/ young adult. I would want to invest in a in depth assessment such as the DISC assessment where you could explore their personality traits then partner it with a skills assessment to see not only what type of personality they are but also what types of skills they have. An assessment that I am not too familiar with but like what I’ve seen so far is the O*net assessment. It helps determine career interests but it is also limiting. I haven’t partnered the O*net assessment with the skills assessment or traitify (or disc) yet but I feel like it may help determine a career interest for an aspiring youth.
For my Informal Assessment would be in Oral Presentation. It would consist of a questionnaire, (I would fill out, while asking the person, who they are, what their interests are, what skills they have, what skills they have, what their interests are, what are their goals and what is their dream job. For my Formal Assessment, I would have a test for them to take to show their basic skills, as in reading, comprehension, solving problems and math. The CASAS TEST a basic skills test we give our customers at work now.