A Career Assessment is Like Picking a Job by Drawing Straws. Part 6

Or maybe flipping a coin—it all depends on your preference. Career assessments may look serious and structured on the surface, but they actually mask complex issues that few people fully understand. The process largely relies on tests followed by a consultation to explain the results and recommend career paths. Let’s break this down into three key points.

A Worrying Lack of Standards Among Advisors

There is no regulatory framework for career assessments, meaning:

• No standards for the tests used
• No oversight of assessment practices
• No minimum training requirements

Proper questioning skills are rarely applied in standard career assessments due to time constraints. And when they are used, even well-intentioned but unskilled advisors can unconsciously:

• Guide the student’s thinking in a pre-set direction
• Show limited openness in their questioning
• Overlook critical areas that need deeper exploration
• Miss underlying beliefs that need to be challenged
• Subtly influence the student’s answers At a minimum, these issues can deeply impact the assessment’s value.

The Complexity of Career-Related Questions

There are many types of questions used in professional assessments. Without diving into each type—since you can find these online with your preferred AI—here’s a sampling: open-ended, closed, leading, alternative, control, diversion, challenging, motivating, suggestive questions, and interrogative responses. Each type can shape the conversation in distinct ways.

Misleading Package Names and Processes

Here’s a quick example: the BIOP website, a service run by the Paris Chamber of Commerce (accessed in 2010, and I have a screenshot for proof if needed) stated: “The career guidance specialist assisting you with your career assessment will ensure you take orientation and personality tests selected based on your personal and/or academic situation.”

A customized “career and personality test” tailored to your unique needs sounds impressive, but it’s an empty promise—there’s no such thing.

Is the Pyramid Method Relevant?

Whether it’s an assessment or general advice, you’ll likely be offered a pyramid method that, frankly, doesn’t add much value. For context, this pyramid method is almost identical to that used in skills assessments.

The pyramid approach addresses these areas without much probing:

• Your academic level
• Your strengths/weaknesses (often based on the RIASEC or MBTI personality models at work)
• Your competencies
• Your interests

In itself, it’s restrictive but perhaps workable. The problem is the lack of genuine exploration. Structuring a career guidance method around these elements alone is conceptually and structurally reductive, if not outright misguided.

It appears these professionals ignore crucial aspects of the question at hand because accounting for them would make the process too long and too costly. Can we assume they’re acting in good faith and simply haven’t considered this? Or perhaps they lack the clarity to include it?

After all:

• Knowledge or academic level can be improved through effort.
• Character or “soft skills” can be developed.
• Skills can be learned through experience.

So, what is the point of their services if they don’t take this into account?

When a Service Ignores Client Needs, It’s Usually Due to:

1. Lack of empathy (think basic reflection, design thinking, etc.)
2. Practical limitations
3. An unfavorable cost-to-benefit ratio

If the majority of people are poorly guided, it’s because providing a standardized and intelligent approach to career support is too costly, and clients aren’t willing to pay for the level of service needed. There’s a need, and the problem is immense, yet few people can or want to pay to solve it properly, as the consequences aren’t immediate.

It’s like smoking—lung cancer isn’t for another 20 years. We’ll worry about it when the time comes.