Chapter 11 Career and Employment assessments

               In this chapter (career and employment assessment) it discusses different types of career assessments and factors that affect career choices. I found this chapter to be very interesting as I really enjoyed taking my Career class this summer. I was particularly drawn to the section about Holland’s SDS. This past Saturday, I joined the office of Career Services (even though this is not their P.C. name anymore) in facilitating Hollands SDS and a discussion for new potential students who had not chosen a major yet. It was a lot of fun especially since we split students into their interests first and then discussed different code types and realistic major choices for them. I know when I took the SDS it was very accurate for myself.  As school counselors career direction is an essential part of our job. It is important to understand the limitations that our clients will bring to our tables. Without being well versed in basic Career Assessments we will not be able to successfully guide our population of students in the right direction. 

               For as skeptical as I was when I started this class I am really starting to fully appreciate the number of assessments I have become familiar with as well as understanding the importance they bring to the school counseling field. I was surprised to read that testing does not discriminate against minority groups or women. I would tend to think that due to language barriers and or cultural differences there would be discrepencies and as a result some sort of bias. While this does exist it does not seem to be as prevalent as I always thought. As a lot of the chapter dealt with Career and Personnel testing it reminded me a lot of the article I presented on. 

               I think it was interesting that employment tests are more uniformly used in federal and state agencies but it makes sense. Since big companies need to function like a well-oiled machine; how better to do this than by standardizing the evaluation and testing procedure?

Drummond, R. J. and Jones, K. (2010). Assessment procedures for counselors and helping professionals. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.