Career Assessment on the Internet: An Exploratory Study

In spite of the proliferation of job/career Web sites and the many articles and books discussing how to use these sites in job searching, we know of no research dealing with career assessment on the Internet. In an effort to remedy this deficit, the authors located a multitude of career sites containing a bewildering array of offerings. The research reported here focused on 24 Web career sites identified as having no-cost career assessment. While easy to use, the sites provided only a moderate degree of test interpretation and fit into a schema of career planning only to a limited extent. The authors' subjective overall evaluation of these sites was not high (3.3 on a 5-point scale)—just above the mid-point of "Neither good nor poor." Ratings of the factors based on the National Career Development Association (NCDA) guidelines for career planning on the Internet tended to be low: few sites provided much information about the developers of the site, no site asserted that its assessment instrument was validated for self-use, and no site stated that the sites to which it provided links met NCDA guidelines. Most sites provided confidentiality only to a limited extent in that they generally did not ask for the visitor's name and password. The authors discuss implications of their research for career counseling professionals, for career research, and for career site developers.