May 9, 2008

Career Coaching and Assessments


Combining Career Assessments with Coaching is helpful for people searching for career direction or in career transition. Whenever we are in a transition period externally or internally, we are in a state of turmoil and in need of a new direction. Students wanting more clarification for choosing further education, workers who are downsized, and those who are unsatisfied or burned-out with their current careers go through transition.

Dr. Dan Trathen provides career services for individuals ages 14 and above. All of us work hard to create our life and earn a living. Dr. Dan Trathen wants to help you succeed, achieve your goals, and experience your greatest potential through assessments and coaching.

Why would a parent have a high school or college student tested?
  • To see what abilities the student and how those might be translated into possible career possibilities
  • Lack of direction
  • Unable to decide on a major
  • Dissatisfaction with college or high school classes
  • Better clarity to pick a college
Some of the available assessments are the Student Styles Questionnaire™, Career Assessment Inventory™, Campbell Interest and Skill Survey CISS®, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®. The beauty of assessments is that it gives parents and students a roadmap for making good choices for further education, and it gives adults the opportunity to better understand themselves and discover careers that might fit better for them.


Student Styles Questionnaire™

This assessment analyzes students in four scales: Extroverted/Introverted, Thinking/Feeling, Practical/ Imaginative, and Organized/ Flexible. It is patterned after the original Jungian constructs that were popularized by Myers and Briggs.

Students respond to 69 forced-choice questions related to real-life situations to express their individual styles. Each item is a brief description of an everyday event, followed by two mutually exclusive alternative responses that indicate the student's preferred style. The Student Styles Questionnaire™ measures preferences, not actual behaviors; students are encouraged to respond in terms of what they like to do.

Multiple Applications. Results are useful for grouping students for cooperative learning tasks, exploring vocational and prevocational choices, assisting in social and emotional counseling, and planning intervention strategies appropriate to a student's particular style. Each style is derived from 16 combinations of the four traits. The Student Styles Questionnaire™ can also help in parent training, suggesting communication strategies for both parents and teachers. Interpretive reports include suggested instructional strategies.

The classroom applications booklet provides teachers and guidance counselors with ideas for activities in specific subject areas for each student style. It applies to students ages 8 through 17 in grades 3 through 12. The purpose is to measure styles of learning, relating and working.


Career Assessment Inventory™ (Enhanced Version)

This instrument is used by school guidance counselors (in high schools, community colleges and universities), psychologists and personnel professionals for career guidance, adult career development, and human resource development. It is used for ages 15 through adulthood. It can be useful in helping students focus on the patterns of interest that are important in making educational and occupational choices, assisting students in identifying a career direction and selecting major areas of study, advising individuals who are re-entering the workforce or considering a career change, screening job applicants, and providing career development assistance to displaced workers. The combined gender scales of the Career Assessment Inventory™ instrument allow for the broadest interpretation of survey results. An interpretive report is provided. The enhanced version of the Career Assessment Inventory™ focuses on careers requiring 4 years of college education.


Vocational Version of the Career Assessment Inventory™

The instrument is an interest inventory that helps identify occupational interests for individuals who plan to enter careers immediately after high school or community college. This version focuses on careers requiring less than two years of post-secondary training.

This Career Assessment Inventory™ instrument is used by counselors, job training specialists, psychologists, and personnel professionals for career guidance, adult career development, and human resource development. The Career Assessment Inventory™ instrument can be useful in:
  • Identifying occupational interests of individuals who plan to enter careers immediately after high school or community college and who are pursuing occupations that require less than two years of post-secondary education.
  • Helping students focus on the patterns of interest that are important in making educational and occupational choices.
  • Working with clients in vocational rehabilitation settings to explore new career options.

Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (CISS®)

This measures self-reported vocational interests and skills. Similar to traditional interest inventories, the CISS® interest scales reflect an individual's attraction for specific occupational areas. It is used for individual's ages 15 through adulthood. The CISS® is a tool that reveals information about a person's interests. Participants receive a 20-page computerized report with different career suggestions and fields to explore.

However, the CISS® instrument goes beyond traditional inventories by adding parallel skill scales that provide estimates of an individual's confidence in his or her ability to perform various occupational activities. Together, the two types of scales provide more comprehensive, richer data than interest scores alone.

The CISS® instrument focuses on careers that require post-secondary education and is most appropriate for use with individuals who are college bound or college educated. CISS® Applications and Benefits. The CISS®; instrument is used by counselors, psychologists, and human resource professionals in mental health, business, and educational settings. It can be useful in:
  • Exploring new avenues in career development. With the CISSŪ, instrument, students and adults learn how their likes, dislikes, and self-reported skills compare to those of individuals who are happily and successfully employed in a variety of occupations.
  • Pinpointing areas of academic study that can build skills and, as a result, increase career options.
  • Helping individuals seeking personal counseling to find occupations or vocations that help meet their psychological needs.
  • Assisting employees who have been displaced by organizational restructuring and are faced with a job transition.
CISS® Features
  • The CISS® instrument uses contemporary items.
  • The items reflect a respect for individuals of different gender, race, religion, and national origin.
  • The occupational orientations are labeled with readily understood action words, such as Influencing and Creating.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®

This is a forced-choice, self-report inventory that has the premise that individuals have more than one source of motivation. The MBTI ®reveals information about a person's personality and type, and how they problem solve and make decisions. It can give valuable information on related careers.

The MBTI® focuses on the value of individual differences in people that result from where they prefer to focus their attention, the way they like to take in information and the way they make decisions and adapt their lifestyle. The MBTI® is concerned with the constructive use of differences. The Theory and Purpose of the MBTI® is that people have certain mental habits; What they pay attention to, What they care about, and How they decide things. Many of the different mental habits or preferences can be grouped into: 2 sets of functions (core of personality) and 2 sets of attitudes (how the functions are manifested).

The MBTI® classifies individuals along four relatively bi-polar dimensions. These sets of functions and attitudes result in 8 different preferences and in the possibility of 16 different personality types. Each type is represented by 4 letters.
  1. Each person is classified in positive terms by what he/she likes or prefers, not by what he/she lacks.
  2. The MBTI® was not designed to measure pathology or intelligence.
  3. The MBTI® does not try to label people, but rather to help identify and clarify the preferences which they already have. The attitudes and functions are as follows:

    EFocus AttitudesI
    SPerceiving FunctionsN
    TDeciding FunctionsF
    JLifestyle AttitudesP
Clinical Uses of the MBTI ® (High School through Adults):
  1. Individual Counseling (Adolescent, College, and Adult)
  2. Career Counseling
  3. Pre-Marital Counseling
  4. Marital Counseling
  5. Family Counseling
  6. Mediation Services
For more information on MBTI®, click here.


Career Coaching

Dr Dan Trathen also provides career coaching services. Coaching is used by people who want to enhance their lives. Coaching can differ from psychotherapy in that it is more growth-oriented and helps people move forward with their lives or deal with present issues. Coaching can also be done by telephone.

After going through the career assessments and obtaining the written reports and feedback, many persons choose individual coaching to work on individual goals and strategies. Career Coaching is also provided for people who do not want to take any assessments, but want to make life or career changes.

Sample topics to explore and processes in Career coaching:
  • Understanding of abilities for career redirection, change, retiring
  • Choosing a match in colleges and vocational training
  • Making changes, job leads, starting a new business
  • Developing and implementing an individualized strategy to meet your life goals and aspirations
  • Being held accountable for reaching goals
  • Meeting weekly or bimonthly with sessions on phone or in person
  • What it takes to lead a balanced life that will give you a sense of fulfillment, and satisfaction
Some potential benefits of Career Coaching:
  • Clarity of your personal and career goals
  • Someone to ask you the right questions
  • Having accountability/support system to make changes
  • Engaging in a growing process that will give you lifetime benefits

Click here for the Assessments Overview.
 

HOME          COUNSELING          COACHING          CONSULTATION          PERSONALITY ASSESSMENTS
RESOURCES          ARTICLES          ABOUT US          CONTACT US          SITE CONTENTS


Copyright © 2003-2008 Daniel W. Trathen, All Rights Reserved.    303-593-0575    info@DrTrathen.com
Web site designed by Dr. Daniel Trathen and iMarks Web Solutions, LLC.
Site Use and Credits