Career guidance testing of adolescents

Finding the right career path for adolescent clients can be an exciting and difficult task. Teens frequently experience uncertainty about what careers might fit their values, interests, and skill set during this crucial stage of life. Testing for career guidance provides a method of direction, bringing some clarity to the decision-making process.

These tests use structured assessments to find young people’s preferences and strengths. They offer suggestions for possible career paths based on personal qualities and abilities, helping to highlight areas where teenagers can flourish.

This method helps teens feel more confident about their future decisions and gives them a sense of direction. Career guidance testing can be an invaluable resource for families seeking to support their child’s transition into adulthood, regardless of whether the child is exploring traditional fields or emerging industries.

Teenagers can investigate their strengths, interests, and possible career paths with the use of career guidance testing. It gives them understanding of their particular abilities and preferences, enabling them to make well-informed decisions about their next courses of study and employment. Career testing gives teenagers the confidence to take the first steps toward a successful and meaningful professional life by providing them with personalized recommendations.

On the work of the Center for Development of a Professional Career

We asked Victoria Tarkova, Deputy Director, about the Center for Development of a Professional Career.

We have ten years of experience as a center. We are an organization under the Novosibirsk Region’s Ministry of Labor and Social Development. Our objective is to make young people more competitive in the job market. Working under the auspices of a state assignment, we offer free services to young people between the ages of 14 and 29. If an older person requires professional retraining, we also charge for our services. We forecast the demand for different specialties and provide information about the current state of the labor market to both adults and teenagers.

According to Victoria Vladimirovna, the Center currently employs five consultants, all of whom are licensed psychologists. The institution works with the majority of Novosibirsk schools, despite having a small staff. Career guidance training, seminars, games, and tests are conducted by specialists who visit the school. They also work with students, but their approach is a little different in that they help them prepare for successful employment by helping them prepare a resume, look for possible employers, and present themselves well during interviews. Additionally, though primarily as an experiment, they began working with younger children:

Victoria Tarkova reports that the school administered extensive career guidance assessments to students in grades 5-7 in March 2018. – Five and fifty thousand kids took it. Parents showed a lot of interest in these topics; they wanted to know how to help their child become less anxious, what kind of school to enroll him in, and how to encourage learning.

Tests are different

Naturally, we had to ask Victoria Vladimirovna how much confidence to place in career guidance exams. Can one choose their future specialty with just one test, or is it possible to live without them?

According to Victoria Tarkova, "We cannot say that testing is mandatory; it is simply a component of career guidance work." We can ascertain children’s interests and abilities through testing. After that, we engage them in play, teach them how to perform tasks, and invite them to watch our collection of several dozen videos.

The expert asserts that a single test cannot determine one’s professional fate, particularly over the long term. Even though a person has a strong desire to get better in a certain area and can be quite successful in it, there are situations when their abilities are not readily apparent. In particular, Victoria Vladimirovna cautions parents against placing undue faith in unidentified developers’ test results, which are occasionally available online or even in glossy magazines.

Victoria Tarkova cautions that testing is important and should not be undervalued since it reveals the objective state of affairs. – In our work, we employ dependable techniques that have been tried and tested on sizable audiences in Russian scientific institutes. The Moscow State University Humanitarian Technologies group created the primary program that we use today.

You came with your child to the Center for the Development of a Professional Career. What"s next?

Of course, the prospect of professional testing of children—by highly qualified specialists, at no cost—will pique the interest of many Sibmoms. We tried to learn from the Center’s staff members how an individual career guidance consultation is conducted, particularly for parents who, after reading our article, choose to get in touch with it.

– First, an initial conversation is held between the parents and the teenager with a specialist, – describes the procedure the Center"s career consultant psychologist Artur Tsikh. – After that, depending on the request, testing on the computer is offered. This can be a fairly quick express survey, or it can be a full test, designed for an hour and a half. Then the specialist studies the results, answers questions from the parents and the child and gives recommendations. This may be advice regarding the choice of an educational institution, or a suggestion to pay attention to the development of some personal qualities, for example, communication skills, if they are important for the desired profession.

We couldn’t help but notice the career guidance tests on the Center’s website. Is taking them alone sufficient for an adolescent? Perhaps speaking with a psychologist is not even necessary?

"The assessments are dependable, albeit brief, and appropriate for kids who are unable to visit the Center due to various circumstances," says Victoria Tarkova. – We strongly advise taking them—possibly more than once. However, the website only offers five approaches.

"It’s best to tackle everything at once," Artur Tsikh encourages her. – After all, the psychologists at the Center are equipped with a vast array of knowledge, and we employ different strategies based on the circumstances. The specialist’s job is to find a middle ground between an individual’s abilities, goals, and capabilities—rather than to recommend a career path for a teenager. Additionally, the teenager might have never thought of this as a new option.

According to Victoria Tarkova, a child’s perspectives on potential careers are frequently constrained by his or her horizons:

We all understand how a teacher or a doctor works, but we are unaware of the general workings of, say, a systems engineer. We have access to job descriptions, which provide an overview of different professions. It is one thing for a child to be interested in chemistry or mathematics, but it is quite another to be able to apply this knowledge to a job. We will assist in putting the child in touch with professionals in this field who can describe their work, rather than just recommending one specialty over another, which would only confuse the youngster. The teen’s professional horizons broaden right away!

The experts at the Center will also assist with practical matters like selecting a school. Artur Tsikh provides an illustration of one of these consultations:

An adolescent has a strong interest in IT technologies, such as programming and game development, but he struggles in analytical subjects like physics and mathematics. Parents understandably wonder if their child will be able to attend the relevant university faculty. However, a lot of parents are unaware that teenagers possess the necessary skills and knowledge for distinct specializations, such as working with computer graphics.

According to Artur Aleksandrovich, the experts at the Center consider the parents’ preferences in addition to the child’s interests and skills. And in this case, a psychologist’s experience is more crucial than a career consultant’s abilities. It’s imperative to resolve intergenerational conflicts and assist the family in selecting a career path for the adolescent that will benefit the child, the mother, and the father, while also being within the young man’s reach.

– One day, an eleventh-grader came to us, – Artur Aleksandrovich shares his personal experience. – Her relatives had been doctors for several generations. Naturally, the parents wanted their daughter to follow in their footsteps. But the girl was not interested in medicine, her passion was music. She already had her own rock band! And here the specialists of our center needed to find a compromise between the desire of the parents and the preferences of the daughter. As a result, the graduate realized that it is not necessary to work in the field in which you have a burning interest. Music and dancing suited her well as a hobby. And since she did not want to go into "pure" medicine, she became interested in a related industry. Thus, she satisfied her parents" wishes and was able to realize her creative potential.

Using career guidance testing to assist teenagers in identifying their interests and strengths is a crucial developmental step. It enables them to investigate possible career routes that fit their particular interests and skill set.

Teens benefit from this process by becoming more confident and able to make well-informed decisions about their future. They can set more specific goals and work toward them with greater direction and purpose if they have a better understanding of their own capabilities.

Engaging educators and parents in this process guarantees that teenagers experience a sense of support. They can successfully and more easily negotiate the frequently confusing world of career choices if they receive the appropriate guidance.

Video on the topic

Choosing a profession. Career guidance test for teenagers – Aristotelian.

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