What is a Career Exploration Assessment? What can I expect if I am referred for one?

If you are working with a state vocational rehabilitation (VR) agency, you may be referred to a community-based provider for an assessment service. There are several different types of assessments that VR agencies use including community-based work assessments (CBWA), diagnostic vocational evaluations (DVE), and career exploration assessments. While these assessments share some elements, they each offer a distinct purpose as it relates to helping someone with career development and planning. In this article, we are providing an overview of career exploration assessments.

The CRS Program Guide from ACCES-VR defines a career exploration assessment as:

"The vocational evaluator meets with the ACCES-VR customer for a comprehensive evaluation including reviewing/evaluating the individual's education, work experience, skills, interest, and aptitude areas. Additionally, during the assessment period, referral information, information obtained during interviews, career interest tools, and structured career exploration activities are expected to be utilized by the evaluator."

Over the course of the assessment, a participant will complete a series of activities and tools to help inform career planning.

How this differs from other assessment services

The distinction is mostly one of focus.

A community-based work assessment centers on observing how someone performs in a real work environment. A diagnostic vocational evaluation tends to look more closely at functional capacities, testing, and questions about vocational feasibility.

A career exploration assessment is forward-looking. It starts from the assumption that you have skills, interests, and experiences worth building on, and it asks a different question: given what you bring and what you want, what are the realistic options, and which ones are worth pursuing first? The work is less about measuring and more about generating and narrowing choices.

What happens during the assessment

A typical authorization allows for up to ten hours of assessment activity. In practice, the actual time varies based on the person. The assessment runs as long as it takes to answer the questions you and your counselor came in with.

The number and duration of sessions depends on several factors, but sessions typically run from two to five hours. We will discuss options with you when we reach out to schedule.

Lincoln Square Coaching offers the career exploration assessment in person at our Manhattan office, virtually, or as a combination of the two. Many people take the hybrid approach, meeting remotely for conversations and coming into the office for the activities that work better in person. If travel, scheduling, or the demands of getting to an unfamiliar location would make it harder for you to participate fully, say so when we reach out. The format should work for you, not the other way around.

Every assessment is shaped around the person, so no two look exactly alike. That said, most include some version of the following.

A conversation about your background. Your evaluator will spend time getting to know you: your education and training, any jobs or volunteer work you have done, what you liked and did not like about them, what you are good at, and what you want your working life to look like. This is usually the most important part of the assessment, and it is a conversation rather than an interview.

A review of referral information and records. Your VR counselor sends along information when they make the referral. Your evaluator reviews it so that you are not asked to repeat things you have already shared, and so the assessment builds on what is already known rather than starting over.

Tools that build a profile of how you work. Most of what we administer is aimed at putting together a strengths-based picture of you: your interests, values, work style, talents, the skills you have built, and the attributes that shape how you do your best work. Some of these are structured inventories that help organize what you already know about yourself and sometimes surface options you have not considered. If a result does not sound like you, say so. That reaction is useful information and we will talk about it.

Assessments matched to the direction you are exploring. Some instruments are selected because of what you are considering. If you are interested in trade school, that might mean a mechanical aptitude assessment. If you are looking at clerical or administrative work, it might mean a typing or data entry assessment. Aptitude and achievement measures do produce scores, and we will go over what yours mean and what they do not. A score tells you something specific about one skill at one moment. It is one piece of information among many, and it is never the whole picture of what you are capable of.

A look at what you want from work. Beyond skills and aptitudes, the assessment makes room for preferences and priorities: schedule, environment, pace, how much interaction with other people feels right, what you need from a workplace to stay in a job and be satisfied in it. People leave jobs over these factors as often as they leave over the work itself, so they belong in career planning from the start.

Transferable skills and gap analysis, if you have prior work experience. If you have worked before or have a history of consistent volunteer experience, you have built skills that carry into other settings, and often more of them than you would name on your own. A transferable skills analysis identifies what you already bring and where it applies. A gap analysis then compares that against what a particular occupation requires, which shows concretely what education, training, or credentialing would close the distance. For people considering a change of field, this is often the most useful part of the assessment.

Structured career exploration activities. This is where the assessment gets concrete. Depending on your goals, activities might include researching specific occupations, reviewing job postings to see what employers actually ask for, informational conversations with people working in a field, hands-on work samples, or exploring the training and credentials a particular path requires.

Labor market information. Interest matters, but so does whether the work exists near you, what it pays, and what it takes to get in. Your evaluator will help you look at real local data so that the options on your list are options you can actually pursue. We draw on a range of data sources here, because informed choice depends on having an accurate picture of the field you are considering.

Instruments we may use

The specific instruments selected depend on your goals and circumstances, and your assessment may include some of these, others not listed here, or a different combination entirely. Representative examples include the Strong Interest Inventory, O*NET Interest Profiler, SkillScan, Character Strengths Survey, Oregon Avocational Interest Scales (ORAIS), CASAS Reading and Math GOALS 2 assessments, Career Ability Placement Survey (CAPS), Career Occupational Preference System Interest Inventory (COPS), Career Orientation Placement and Evaluation Survey (COPES), Working Styles Assessment (WSA), Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF), Adult Executive Functioning Inventory (ADEXI), Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS), Self-Determination Inventory (SDI), and Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test (BMCT).

What a career exploration assessment is not

It helps to be clear about a few things up front.

It is not a test you can pass or fail. Some of the instruments do produce scores, and you are entitled to know what they measure and what your results mean. The goal of the overall assessment is to help inform career direction while identifying the services, training, and supports that can help you pursue your career goal. A score that comes in lower than you hoped points toward what training or support might help.

It is not a decision that gets made about you. You are a participant in the process, not a subject of it. Your evaluator's job is to help you think clearly and gather good information, not to tell you what to do.

It helps to inform the vocational goal for your Individualized Plan for Employment (IPE). Career goals change, and so your plan is ultimately something that can be adjusted in consultation with your VR counselor. Career planning is something you will revisit over time.

It is not job placement. A career exploration assessment is about clarifying direction. Actually pursuing a job, training program, or credential comes afterward, and is usually coordinated through your VR counselor.

What you receive at the end

At the close of the assessment, your evaluator prepares a written report that goes to your VR counselor. Lincoln Square Coaching aims to complete the report within ten business days of the final assessment session. At this point, we will also contact you to schedule a case conference with you and your VR counselor to review the report together. During a case conference you will review the results of the assessment as well as the recommendations being made by the evaluator.

A good report should be recognizable to you. It typically includes a summary of your strengths, interests, and relevant experience, the occupational options explored and how each one fits, any barriers identified along with practical strategies for addressing them, and specific recommended next steps. That might mean a training program, a credential, an on-the-job experience, or particular supports and accommodations that would help you succeed.

The report is meant to be used. It gives you and your counselor a shared foundation for building or updating your Individualized Plan for Employment (IPE).

How to get the most out of it

Come with what you know about yourself. You do not need to arrive with a career goal. But thinking beforehand about which past experiences felt good and which did not gives you and your evaluator a lot to work with.

Be honest about what is not working. If a schedule, an environment, or a type of task has been a problem for you in the past, say so. That is not a mark against you. It is exactly the kind of information that leads to better recommendations.

Tell your evaluator what helps you do your best. If you need materials in a particular format, breaks at certain intervals, written instructions instead of verbal ones, or a different meeting time, ask. The assessment should be set up so that it reflects what you can do.

Ask questions. What is this activity for? What did that result mean? What would this path actually require? You are allowed to push back, and the assessment is better when you do.

If you have been referred

If your VR counselor has referred you to Lincoln Square Coaching for a career exploration assessment, we will reach out to schedule an initial meeting and walk you through what to expect. If you have questions before then, you can reach us at contact@lincolnsqcoaching.com or speak with your ACCES-VR counselor.