Internet-Based Self-Help Career Assessments and Interventions: Challenges and Implications for Evidence-Based Career Counseling

Abstract

A major characteristic of the 21st century with significant implications on career decision making is the growing prevalence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Challenges involving ICT-based self-assessment and self-help interventions aimed at facilitating career decision making are discussed. Specifically, this article focuses on the importance of using career counselors’ expert knowledge to develop more advanced online career self-assessments and self-help interventions and ways of incorporating them into the process of career counseling. The first section of this article focuses on online career assessment. To help individuals, online self-assessments should include not only scoring but also an interpretation of the scores (e.g., indicating what the client’s main difficulties are) as well as recommendations for future actions (e.g., how to cope with these difficulties). The second section focuses on developing online evidence-based career interventions that are tailored to the individual’s needs and characteristics, designed to both advance clients’ career decision-making process, and deal with specific difficulties that impede decision making. The third section discusses the challenges of incorporating self-assessments and self-help interventions into face-to-face career counseling. Career clients can use online assessments and interventions before approaching a career counselor or as part of the career counseling process. Consequently, career counselors should broaden their expertise by becoming familiar with various Internet self-assessments and interventions, and capable of evaluating their quality, so that they can make the best use of them for the benefit of their clients.