Career Assessment And The 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire

A client taking a personality questionnaire responds to a series of self-descriptive questions. Someone has described the process as ''a self-administered interview.'' Interpretation of the scores is based on comparison of the individual's responses with those of some general population. As I see it, using a personality questionnaire for occupational assessment is similar to the basic interpretation described above, except that the individual is being compared to one or more occupational groups in addition to the general population. The client has answered a series of questions about self in some particular circumstance: prejob, career advisement, midlife change, early retirement, college-major choice, and so forth. The counselor compares the client's scores to known occupational group profiles, sometimes with known job relatedness in mind.