Assessment Selection Issues

Career Planning Academy: Continuing Education Opportunities for Career Professionals (Assessment)

(Original published in the January-February Issue of the Career Development Network Newsletter)

by Janet Wall

Career Planning Academy is an approved continuing education provider. Completing any of our online, self-paced courses, certification, live webinars, or recorded webinars earns you clock hours for such certifications as the NCC, LPC, GCDF, BCC, CWDP, EVGP and CRC and the NCDA credentials. Typically these certifications require about 50 -100 clock hours of continuing education every five years. This column is devoted to professional development related to Assessment in Career Development.

Deciding on a career often depends on three major elements – what we like or want to do (interests), what we are good at (abilities and skills), and who will pay you to do what you like and can do (labor market information and jobs).  When all three areas are working in harmony, we experience the sweet spot in our career progression.

Typically, assessments play a critical role in the first two areas – determining what we like to do and what we are good at. Because this is true, it is imperative that career and workforce development advisors, counselors, and coaches understand what factors are important in using good assessment with their students and clients, and how they can be sure the assessments they use are of appropriate quality.

Here is a short list of factors career development professionals can use as they go about selecting and using assessment in their work.

1. Purpose. Why are you using assessment to begin with? What is it you want to know about clients to help them in their career decision making? Until you determine the purpose for which you are using assessment, you should not move forward. Just because your supervisor said you should use an assessment or just because your colleagues are doing so, is no reason to use one or the same one yourself.  Your focus should be on what clients need to know about themselves, and how that that information relates to careers. Identify the purpose first and foremost.
   
2. Quality. Presuming you have identified why you are using an assessment, the next step is finding the best one/s for your purpose. Best is typically related to two major technical characteristics – reliability and validity. Reliability relates to how consistently the assessment measures what it is purports to measure. High reliability is important because if an assessment is not measuring consistently, then we have no idea if the result is accurate.

Validity is a word career development professionals bandy about frequently in assessment discussions, but often the real importance of that term is not fully understood. So often when someone asks for a recommendation for a valid assessment, it conveys that the person is not clear on what validity means.

The assessment community has created many very high quality assessments. Naming just a few are the SAT, ACT, ASVAB, SDS, SII and others. These assessments have research studies that show how the results of those assessments can and should be interpreted and used. Although these assessments are highly researched and supported by hundreds of studies, they are not valid for all situations and purposes. Thus, validity is narrowly related to how the results can and should be used; it is not an inherent characteristic of the assessment. Thus, there is no such thing as a valid assessment. Validity deals with the assessment results and the evidence that shows how you can use the results for certain interpretations and uses, not for just any purpose.

If there is little or weak reliability or validity evidence available on the assessment you are considering, don’t use it.  Using it would be unprofessional and unethical, and it has the potential of harming your client. Professional ethics standards support this claim.

3. Interpretation. Working with a student or client on interpreting an assessment is both an art and a science. The art part comes with appreciating your client’s ability to understand the interpretation and using language they comprehend and can relate to. You need to provide sufficient information so that clients understand and can act on the results, but not so much as to overwhelm them.

The science part relates back to the validity concept in that your interpretation of the results to and with the client should not deviate beyond what the validity evidence supports. Limit your interpretation only to what the authors or publishers have confirmed through research studies.

Just as one example of a misinterpretation: sometimes career development professionals might steer clients that have an introverted preference to careers and jobs that are quiet and don’t related much to people. There is no evidence that shows introverts cannot be successful in high relatability jobs. To shut people out of certain careers based on little evidence is at best misplaced, and at worst immoral.

One last point: as career professionals, we must be competent in the assessment and not go beyond our training. Some assessments require specific training and others do not. Even if training on the assessment is not mandatory, it is incumbent upon us to know the assessment thoroughly and read all the available information on it, including the technical manuals.

4. Utility. This concept relates to budget, utility, ease of administration, and storage of results. These real world conditions have to be thought out well before we start using assessments. There are some assessments that cost dozens and hundreds of dollars per person. Some of us do not work in institutions that can afford that. We need to look for comparable quality assessments that fit the budget we have. Free assessments are only an option if they meet our stated purpose and have substantial technical quality.

Utility deals with the mode of administration. We may not be able to use an internet delivered assessment and only paper and pencil will do. We may not be able to store hundreds of paper and pencil assessments, and only computer storage will do. We or the client may not have several hours to take an assessment. There are other practical aspects to consider.

If you are interested in upskilling on the use of assessment in career and workforce development, Career Planning Academy has a number of relevant courses and webinars that relate.  They are:

Selecting the Right Assessment (4 CEU clock hours)
Assessment Issues for America’s Job Center Staff (4-5 CEU clock hours)

Visit the website https://careerplanningacademy.com for more continuing education opportunities. Sign up for the VIP Mailing List offering periodic discounts: www.eepurl.com/EUz8f

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Janet Wall, EdD is Founder of Career Planning Academy, author of McGraw-Hill’s ASVAB books, co-author of the Ability Explorer assessment, and former manager of the ASVAB Career Exploration Program. She is an NCDA Fellow and FCD Instructor.

careerfacilitator@janetwall.net  https://careerplanningacademy.com

Education and Death Rates

Can Good Career Advice Save Lives?

Recently, two researchers disclosed that for the first time, the mortality rate for lower educated white males and females has increased, bucking the long established downward trend. Both researchers said they were shocked over this finding because the deaths were from suicide, drugs/opioids, alcohol-related liver disease and other substance abuse issues and not the usual culprits of heart disease and cancer.  You can listen to researchers discussing their findings at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/videos/#161537.

This higher death rate was identified for individuals ages 45-54 – those who may be expected to be at the top of their career game. The researchers and commentators speculate that the reason for this involves anguish from impoverished work opportunities resulting from high unemployment and lower education attainment. Dr. Case, one of the study’s authors, stated that “Fewer economic opportunities, especially for those with less education, have led to more despair and worse health, and in turn more abuse of drugs and alcohol”. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-for-middle-aged-white-americans-study-finds.html?_r=0

In other studies, it has been determined that on average individuals with a high school education live a decade less compared with individuals who have competed college. http://www.prb.org/Publications/Reports/2013/us-educational-attainment-mortality.aspx

A number of years ago, I heard about the link between education level and death rate. The information came from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  I tracked down the data set and created the following charts.

While the data sets from NIH and those used by the researchers are different and the issues studied have a different focus, the link between education and death rates is evident. I have to wonder if better/more career information and career services might, at least to some extent, mitigate the obviously negative effect of lower educational attainment.

Resources:

Death Rates Rising for Middle Aged White Americans, Study Finds
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-for-middle-aged-white-americans-study-finds.html?_r=0

The Effect of Educational Attainment on Adult Mortality in the U.S.
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Reports/2013/us-educational-attainment-mortality.aspx

CEUonestop.com has several courses and webinars that offer career development practitioners information on helping people with career and educational decision making as well has job seeking. Among them are: Realistic Career Decision Making: It’s More Than Passion; Labor Market Information for Career, Workforce and Academic Advisers; Winning Strategies for the Mature Job Seeker; Occupational Information for the Career Adviser; Schlossberg’s Career Transition Theory with a Twist; Proven Social Media Strategies to Help Your Students and Clients Land a Job Faster; and others.

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Janet E. Wall, EdD, MCDP, CDFI, SMMS, NCDA Fellow, is a career development professional and e-learning advocate. She is committed to the continuing education of all career counselors, coaches and specialists by providing online courses and webinars through http://www.CEUonestop.com. She was the developer of the ASVAB Career Exploration Program for the Department of Defense, and was recently named a Fellow of the National Career Development Association. She is co-author of the Ability Explorer published by JIST. Invite her to connect on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/careerfacilitator

Continuing Education to Maintain Your NCDA Designations

The National Career Development Association (NCDA) recently instituted new designations for its members. These designations include Master Career Counselor, Career Counselor, Master Career Specialist, Career Specialist, and Scholars.  The first 4 designations require 30 hours of continuing education every five years to maintain the designation. 

http://associationdatabase.com/aws/NCDA/pt/sp/membership_categories#designations

Where can you get those hours of continuing education?  NCDA offers conferences, workshops, and webinars to assist in accumulating those hours.

CEUonestop.com, an award winning professional development site, was created to provide high quality, low hassle professional development to satisfy the requirements of various certifications in career development.

Recently the online courses http://ceuonestop.com/wp/courses/ from CEUonestop.com were compared to the NCDA Career Counseling Competencies http://associationdatabase.com/aws/NCDA/pt/sd/news_article/37798/_self/layout_ccmsearch/true.

In brief, the competencies include:

• Career Development Theory: Theory base and knowledge considered essential for professionals engaging in career counseling and development.
• Individual and Group Counseling Skills: Individual and group counseling competencies considered essential for effective career counseling.
• Individual/Group Assessment: Individual/group assessment skills considered essential for professionals engaging in career counseling.
• Information/Resources: Information/resource base and knowledge essential for professionals engaging in career counseling.
• Program Promotion, Management and Implementation: Skills necessary to develop, plan, implement, and manage comprehensive career development programs in a variety of settings.
• Coaching, Consultation, and Performance Improvement: Knowledge and skills considered essential in enabling individuals and organizations to impact effectively upon the career counseling and development process.
• Diverse Populations: Knowledge and skills considered essential in providing career counseling and development processes to diverse populations.
• Supervision: Knowledge and skills considered essential in critically evaluating counselor performance, maintaining and improving professional skills, and seeking assistance for others when needed in career counseling.
• Ethical/Legal Issues: Information base and knowledge essential for the ethical and legal practice of career counseling.
• Research/Evaluation: Knowledge and skills considered essential in understanding and conducting research and evaluation in career counseling and development.
• Technology: Knowledge and skills considered essential in using technology to assist individuals with career planning.

The chart below shows the crosswalk between the online courses and the NCDA competencies.

When acquiring your continuing education credits, you can refer to this chart to be sure your continuing education relates to NCDA’s counselor competencies.

CEUonestop also has webinars that relate to the competencies as well. www.ceuonestop.com/wp/webinars. These offerings change frequently.

Related Posts

Maintaining the GCDF Certification
https://careerdevelopmentmusings.wordpress.com/2015/01/09/gcdf-certification/

Maintaining the Board Certified Coach Certification
https://careerdevelopmentmusings.wordpress.com/2014/12/12/board-certified-coach/ 

Maintaining Your GCDF Certification

What an accomplishment!  You completed the career development facilitator certification program and applied for the Global Career Development Facilitator certification from the Center for Credentialing and Education (CCE). You have finished, so pat yourself on the back. You now have upgraded skills, knowledge and resources to help your students and clients.

Keeping your certification active requires some continuing education.

The CCE requires 75 hours of continuing education every five years to maintain your certification. These hours must be directly related to one or more of the GCDF competencies.

You can obtain those 75 hours by attending conferences, participating in workshops, and taking advantage of various online courses and webinars offered by www.CEUonestop.com. At some point you may be audited and asked to verify your participation in the professional development activities you have enjoyed and the content may be examined to see if it relates to the competencies.

CEUonestop.com offers you the opportunity to gain your required clock hours without the hassle of travel, traffic, interrupted schedule, or great expense. CEUonestop courses are all related to one or more of the GCDF competencies.

In a recent review of the online courses, the following crosswalk of the courses to the GCDF competencies was developed. 

You can be confident that the courses will count toward your recertification.  A certificate of completion with the related clock hours is provided to you as evidence that you participated in the training. The courses adhere to the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC) criteria for clock hours so they relate to other certifications as well. Example are the Board Certified Coach, the Nationally Certified Counselor, the Licensed Professional Counselor, and others.

Board Certified Coach Continuing Education

Maintaining Your Board Certified Coach Certification

If you have obtained the certification from the Center for Credentialing and Education (CCE) called the Board Certified Coach (BCC) then you are aware of the fact that you must obtain 100 hours of continuing education related to the BCC competencies every 5 years.

CCE suggests that when deciding to obtain your continuing education that you consider the following questions:

• Does the content of the activity fall into one or more of the six BCC competencies?
• Is the activity geared to coaching?
• Does the activity enhance my role as a coach?
• Am I able to interact with the instructor/facilitator during or after the session?
• Will the activity be completed during my current five-year certification period?
• Does the instructor/facilitator have formal education, expertise or credentialing in the relevant BCC competency areas?

Working with the guidance of CCE, the chart below shows the relationship of the online, self-paced courses in career development from CEUonestop.com to the BCC competencies. The upshot is that these courses can count toward your recertification.  Further, if you hold the career development specialty designation, CCE requires that 18 of your 100 hours must be taken in this specialty.

The courses are offered through CEUonestop.com, an NBCC approved continuing educator provider in career development.  Visit the website to see more details about the courses, the instructional objectives, and the qualifications of our authors.

More details on the BCC competencies are listed below.

Board Certified Coach Competencies

1. Screening and Orientation: These coaching work behaviors focus on client motivation level, informed consent, coach and client roles, and general parameters for establishing the coaching process.

2. Fundamental Coaching Skills: These coaching work behaviors focus on the basic coaching alliance, helping skills, coaching plans and other essential issues concerning the coaching process.

3. Assessment: These coaching work behaviors assess coaching goals, client strengths and specific issues concerning the coaching process.

4. Approaches for Individuals: These coaching work behaviors pertain to specific skills aimed at facilitating the client’s desired goals during the coaching process including monitoring client progress, decision-making and use of resources.

5. Approaches for Businesses and Organizations: These coaching work behaviors include organization roles, change process, mentoring and conflict management related to the coaching process.

6. Ethical and Professional Practice: These coaching work behaviors focus on codes of ethics, advocacy, continuing education and personal barriers to the coaching process.

Maximizing the Higher Ed Payoff for All

The US News and World Report just published its annual rankings of colleges and universities.  As expected the Ivy’s top the list. Princeton, Harvard, Yale and Columbia nail down the ranking for the east coast schools and Stanford holds the title for the west coast.  For the top 10, the tuition and fees range from $41K to $51K per year. Does that reputation and expensive tuition really bring you the financial rewards? 

To answer that question I went to one of my favorite sites on this issue, PayScale.com. Although they have been providing the data for years, only of late has the full impact of the work been highlighted. Recently they provided some updated information on starting salaries by school.  It was discovered that the top colleges according to rankings like those of US News do not correlate well with starting salaries.

Top entering salary earners come from places like Harvey Mudd, US Naval Academy, West Point, MIT, etc.  The chart below comes from the US News site.   As you can see it appears that skills in engineering and technical fields offer the highest starting salaries.

Looking at salaries 10 years later, the top ten salaries for institutions are shown below. Here you see some of the US News Top Ten making the list, but some of the list remains the same. US Naval Academy, M.I.T, Harvey Mudd, West Point, and Cal Tech remain on the top ten list and new schools appear.  Some of the Ivy’s catch up. You should read the full article to investigate more than the top 10 and get a more thorough understanding of the situation.

Majors Matter

Based on this information, deciding where you should go to school would be relatively easy if your goal is to maximize salary. However, the major you select influences your salary as well. Here Pay Scale offers more information.  At their site you can look at how schools compare by majors such as arts majors, business majors, computer science majors, and others.

Georgetown University’s Center for Education and the Workforce offers a comparison of majors against other majors regardless of school attended. The Report, What It’s Worth, also shows the relative payoff of earning a graduate degree in the field.  In some fields the salary payoff is differentially greater only when a graduate degree is earned. 

Focus on Technical Skills

Some think that a college degree is not nirvana nor should it be the goal for all individuals. The former Clinton administration labor secretary, Robert Reich, believes that we are putting way too much emphasis on the college degree and not enough on educating people in the technical skills provided largely through community colleges. Specifically he says “Too often in modern America, we equate “equal opportunity” with an opportunity to get a four-year liberal arts degree. It should mean an opportunity to learn what’s necessary to get a good job.” He would like to see a policy change that focuses more resources on community college programs that supports employer needs. 

Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, along with several other senators, have introduce a bill called the Middle STEP Act which would provide funding for pilot programs that offer career exploration at the middle school level promoting hands on learning and career exploration of  careers related to career and technical education (CTE).

Career Practitioners Matter

Where should I to go to school, what should I major in, where can I afford to go, will I get a job in my area of study, how large will be my student loan debt, how much will I earn, who will employ me, will I be able to grow in my profession, are all questions that need answers in the career decision making process. For parents and students all this is very confusing, but making the right choice is important. That is why school counselors, career coaches, counselors, and academic advisors have an obligation to be absolutely on top of this ever-changing information in order to help our students and clients make conscious and informed choices about their futures.

Related CEUonestop.com Professional Development Courses

Realistic Career Decision Making: It’s More Than Passion

Labor Market Information for Careers, Workforce, and Academic Advisors

Occupational Information for the Career Advisor

CEUonestop.com is an NBCC Approved Continuing Education Provider

 

Related Articles

How the US News and World Report Calculated the Ratings http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2014/09/08/how-us-news-calculated-the-2015-best-colleges-rankings

National Universities Rankings http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities?int=9ff208

Where to Go to College If You Want a High Starting Salary http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2014/09/08/how-us-news-calculated-the-2015-best-colleges-rankings

Where to Go to College if You Want the Highest Starting Salary http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/11/where-to-go-to-college-if-you-want-the-highest-starting-salary/?hpid=z9

GRINGOS — a Term Associated with College Grads

The Brits coined an acronym, “GRINGOS” to mean Graduates in Non-Graduate Occupations. Their concern was that because of the push to have people obtain college degrees, a variety of factors have caused people to complete college degrees and then end up in occupations that do not require that level of education. 

As you read that paragraph, you may have been thinking, well it’s the economy and lack of jobs. There just aren’t sufficient jobs for college grads these days.

The article referenced above suggests that there may be other reasons that college grads are in jobs and occupations requiring less than a college degree.

First, the college grads consider their initial job to be a stepping stone to greater opportunities. This seems reasonable as most of us started our careers at the bottom of the ladder and tried to work our way up to better situations. The upshot is that many do not even try to obtain an educational equivalent job.

Second, everyone is in the same boat. Many do not even try to obtain an education equivalent job. Their peers do not pressure them to find college level jobs.

Third, taking any job allows one to start paying down debt and take stock of their lives, in other words take a breather.

A fourth idea is that we in career services working at all levels from high school through adult, are not providing labor market information to help these individuals decide whether or not they should pursue a college degree for their chosen field and job goals. This is something our professional can do something about.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York in a recent study suggested that employment for recent college grads was higher than those who had been out for a while, (4.3% vice 2.9%).  Underemployment is very different and over the years has remained steady at about 33% while recent college grads underemployment rates have traditionally been higher depending upon the year and the state of the US economy sometimes well over 44% (p.3).

Because college grads are not easily finding jobs requiring a college degree, they are taking lower skilled jobs. These can be ones that are higher quality meaning better pay or those that are lower wage jobs. The Federal Reserve Bank showed that the number of college grads in the good, higher paying jobs has declined, while the number in the lower wage jobs category has risen.

The Federal Reserve suggests two potential areas for our consideration:

“It does appear that one’s college major matters: unemployment and underemployment rates differ markedly across majors. In particular, those who choose majors that provide technical training, such as engineering or math and computers, or majors that are geared toward growing parts of the economy, such as education and health, have tended to do relatively well. At the other end of the spectrum, those with majors that provide less technical and more general training, such as leisure and hospitality, communications, the liberal arts, and even the social sciences and business, have not tended to fare particularly well in recent years.”

And further.. “Timely information on the fields in which jobs are available, what different jobs pay, and the career paths new workers can expect over their lifetime would be helpful to the parents and students investing in a college education. One means of generating such information would be for higher education institutions to establish or expand their partnerships with businesses. In this way, colleges and universities could develop a fuller understanding of the relationship between their own curriculum, the needs of employers, and the majors selected by their students.” (p.7)

Yet how many of us, high school counselor or college advisor, present labor market information to our students and clients.

The National Career Development Association’s  Career Counseling Competencies suggest that we are able to demonstrate knowledge of “Education, training, and employment trends; labor market information and resources that provide information about job tasks, functions, salaries, requirements and future outlooks related to broad occupational fields and individual occupations.” I maintain that we go beyond just knowing this information but passing it on to those making s about career choice.

What do you think?

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Related resources:

Self-paced online course from CEUonestop.com, an NBCC approved continuing education provider called “Labor Market Information for Career, Workforce, and Academic Advisor,” “Occupational Information for the Career Advisor,” and Realistic Career Decision Making: It’s More Than Passion.”

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