NOTE: Many well-known, reliable, and valid assessments are currently available online from their publishers. Therefore, we have not included all assessment tools on this page, but invite readers to reference the NCDA publication “A Counselor’s Guide to Career Assessment Instruments, 6th Edition” (Wood & Hayes, 2013) for more complete information and reviews. This short list of primarily free resources includes tools potentially suitable for youth, young adults, and older clients, but it is necessary for the practitioner to review each prior to using to determine the suitability for their clientele and appropriateness to their scope of practice.
This site provides a “personality” (or preference) assessment that returns a 4-letter code similar to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Users will answer questions and be provided with detailed free information about their type with the option to explore all 16 types. There is a strong “Our Theory” page that describes how the assessment was created and where to go for additional information.
The MAPP is an interest survey designed by the International Assessment Network in Minneapolis, MN. A free sample MAPP Career Analysis is provided to help individuals identify their preferences for working with people or things, and other job characteristics; it also suggests some occupations that match these preferences. The resulting report is sent to the user via e-mail, outlining his or her “natural motivations and talent for work” and matching these to five occupational descriptions from O*NET.
The Department of Defense provides high schools with the Career Exploration Program as a career planning and exploration program. This is free to the schools and students and can provide career path information that students may not be considering. It includes an aptitude and interest assessment with links to occupations.
This site has free online self-assessments for interests, skills, and work values. Users who take the assessments can print and/or save their results and compare with occupational information.
In addition to the Career Decision-making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ), this site includes seven more free assessments designed to assist individuals in the process of making a career decision by helping them clarify difficulties and providing a framework for career decision-making organized into a three-stage process. Information about and access to Making Better Career Decisions (MBCD), an Internet based career planning system, is provided. There is a special section of the website with information specifically for career development practitioners.
Career, education, finance, leadership, and personal plans for success for students. Start with the assessments and learn how to create smart goals and action plans.
These instruments will help individuals identify their work-related interests, what they consider important on the job, and their abilities in order to explore those occupations that relate most closely to those attributes.
The O*Net Interest Profiler is an assessment of client interests based on Holland’s theory (RIASEC). This page has direct links to the four forms of the interest profiler including a 60-question web-based version, a 30-question mobile-friendly version, a paper and pencil hand-scored version, and downloadable software. A Spanish Language version of the online assessment can be found at http://www.miproximopaso.org/explore/ip
This interest assessment was created by Arizona State University to help students and clients match interests scores to occupations and college majors.
A career guidance tool that allows students to respond to questions and identify the top three Career Clusters of interest based on their responses. This pencil/paper survey takes about fifteen minutes to complete and can be used in the classroom or for presentations with audiences who have an interest in career exploration. The survey is available in English and Spanish and can be viewed and printed.
What's important to you in a job? Discover how much you value achievement, independence, recognition, relationships, support, and working conditions in a job. Get a list of jobs that reflect your values.
From exploration and self-assessment, to educational options and information, to occupational information, to salary and economic trend data, CareerOneStop is a comprehensive website with resources and tools for any stage of the career development process. The site contains quality and up-to-date information as well as a searchable directory of American One Stop Centers for clients to find local career development assistance.
Careers.Org is a source for employment, job search and career education information across the world. It includes detailed information about over 1000 occupations, including wages, skills, and links to corresponding college programs and career, job and educational resources for states, cities, and counties in the United States, as well as Canadian Provinces and international countries.
This site contains both summary and detailed information on occupations in the US economy as well as the ability to search for information by various criteria such as job family, industry, skills, knowledge, interests, green jobs, bright outlook occupations, and several others. It is produced by the federal government, is updated frequently, and contains state and national wage information, occupational projections, related occupations and opportunities for more information from professional and trade associations. It is considered to be the basic occupational information for various other websites and career guidance systems.
This is the “go to site” for comprehensive information on occupations and their requirements. Occupational information can be search by several criteria such as wages, education level, training, and job growth. It is updated and produced every two years by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the official agency responsible for collecting and analyzing occupational information.
NOTE: This section includes select resources that provide industry- or occupation-specific career information categorized first by cluster, then by field. Most are professional association websites. If you cannot find information that matches your interest, use the resources found in the General Occupation Information section of this webpage to search for information specific to your desired field/occupation.
This is a free resource for information on degree programs, specialty training opportunities, financial aid, certification and accreditation, and licensing for the various states. It also includes career information and links it to education and training plans. There are links to additional training and education information and articles on how to ensure the quality of the training before signing up for a program. The Local Training Finder tool helps users locate opportunities for training in their desired geographic area. This tool from the National Center for Educational Statistics gives access to information on more than 9,000 colleges, universities, and postsecondary vocational and technical schools in the U.S. Users may search the database by location, type of institution, program and majors offered, availability of housing, and many more options. Users have the option of selecting several school profiles for side-by-side comparisons, and all search results can be sent to a valid e-mail address, printed, or exported as an Excel spreadsheet. The site and all of its information is also available in Spanish.Information on how much it costs to go to different colleges. The center uses and analyzes several federal government databases.
This US Government site offer you the ability to find colleges and universities and compare them on size, cost, graduation rate, student debt pay down, salary after attending, percent of students obtaining federal loans, and others.
Nonprofit educational association that sponsors a nationally recognized accrediting agency for distance education programs. The site includes distance education activities within an institution and it provides a single source of nationally recognized accreditation from the secondary school level through professional doctoral degree-granting institutions. Users visiting the website can find a searchable directory of accredited high school and college degree programs, including some offered by federal and military schools.
Job Corps is a free education and training program that helps young people learn a career, earn a high school diploma or GED, and find and keep a good job. For eligible young people at least 16 years of age that qualify as low income, Job Corps provides the all-around skills needed to succeed in a career and in life.
This resource provides brief articles on tips and ideas to consider when in a career transition. It also offers an assortment of resources that include Colleges, Online Education, and various Guides for specific categories of workers.
This publisher of guides to colleges provides this free searchable resource for information on a variety of training and education programs, including undergraduate and graduate programs, online schools, and help for international students. Among the many descriptions of institutions and degree possibilities are articles on applying for college (both undergraduate and graduate), selecting a school and a program, financing education (financial aid as well as grants/scholarships), and more.
The publisher of U.S. News and World Report produces one of the most well-known guides to education information on the web. Dedicated sections of this area of the website focus on high schools, colleges, community colleges, graduate schools, online programs, and global universities. Various articles are provided on topic such as financial aid, STEM, writing essays, college applications, etc. USNews.com also lists the annual rankings of colleges and graduate schools.
The site offers more than 750 courses in such areas as personal development and soft skills, business and enterprise, digital literacy and financial and economic literacy. There is even a course to assist in selecting a career path.
A center in your location may be able to provide career related training. Search by zip code and distance to find the center nearest you. EdX is an online learning destination and MOOC provider, offering high-quality courses from the world’s best universities and institutions to learners globally. Nearly 1000 courses are available so include many specifically related to career development. This site contains numerous courses that may help your clients sharpen their skills. The site's focus is life-long learning. From the makers of Microsoft tutorials, you can access almost 200 online, self-paced tutorials in math, career, reading, everyday life. You don’t need to register to access the courses, but if you do register, the site will keep a record of your learning for you. Tutorials on job search, career planning, and workplace skills may be most useful. This site contains hundreds of self-paced courses primarily in math, but also in economics, science and engineering, coding, college admissions, and test preparation. Through the LINCS find self-paced online courses, and searchable resources you can find training in such areas as adult basic education, family literacy, adult secondary education, computer literacy, and others. This site makes available virtually all MIT course content. It is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity. You can find business related courses and webinars to help start and maintain a business. On this site your will find many short courses in the areas of business, careers, technology, academics, marketing, lifestyle, health, etc. Type in a course topic in the search window and sort by price (free) to find what is available. Overall, the site claims to have 42,000 courses. Click on the Learning Center tab to see several courses on starting a business, government contracting, finance a business, marketing, and managing a business. Helps individuals learn about financing options for education and training. Information included covers exploration of costs, tools for finding scholarships, tax information related to education and training, and budgeting guides. This is a one-stop center for all of the U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid (FSA) programs. Available in English and Spanish, this site guides users through the process of preparing for college, selecting and applying to schools, securing funding from a variety of sources, attending college, and repaying loans. Information is available for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students as well as parents, international students, and other targeted student populations. FinAid is an information hub for education-related financial aid resources including topics such as scholarships and fellowships, loans savings, and military aid programs. Visitors will find comprehensive information on various financing options, advice on how to approach each, important legislative information, warnings about potential problems and more. Calculator tools are available to help students and parents estimate costs as well as special guides to help educators work with clients around financial aid issues. FAFSA offers easy access and application processing for college funds. A few portions of the site require the user to create a login and password to save profile information, store applications, and customize areas for specific needs. Developed by a partnership between the Council of Graduate Schools and TIAA-CREF, this site is geared toward students considering graduate education, but the information provided is relevant for anyone interested in learning about the factors involved with financially supporting higher education. Users can access a debt estimation tool, information about the different kinds of loan interest rates, cost of living information, loan repayment resources, and links to other financial aid education sites. Peterson’s has search tools for scholarships and other funding resources for both undergraduate and graduate education. Users answer a few questions about themselves and the education they are pursuing and lists of scholarships, fellowships, awards, prizes, etc. are returned that match the information provided. The site boasts over $10 billion in scholarship awards. This sites has a variety of financial information. Placing your cursor over the “Plan for College” section uncovers additional links on saving for college, scholarships, grants, financial aid, types of loans and a college planning toolbox. The tool box offers several calculators and articles of interest. The Southern Regional Education Board has created a program to increase access to college programs for participating institutions in 15 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia). The program, known as the Academic Common Market, allows students living in these states who are interested in programs NOT offered at home-state institutions to apply for consideration for in-state tuition rates at participating out-of-state institutions. Individuals must fill out the application in order to be considered and not all institutions participate in the program. Resources for students, parents, and educators as they consider study abroad programs. By visiting the faculty and advisers section you can find documents such as Campus Best Practices: Supporting Education Abroad & Student Career Development provides a practical guide to best practices and program models in study abroad career integration using specific examples across a variety of campuses in the US. Also offers a framework for understanding, maximizing, and leveraging the career implications of study abroad participation. This blog by field expert Martin Tillman addresses a diverse set of topics relevant to leveraging education abroad for student career development and employability. Tillman’s weekly discussions about national and international research, publications, and perspectives, make this a must-read resource for staying current in the field. This website belongs to the world's largest nonprofit association dedicated to international education and exchange. By browsing “Education Abroad” topics under the professional resources tab, you will find documents such as the Study Abroad Career Plan: A Guide for Advising Students. Students may complete the assignments on their own, or use the key questions as talking points for career advising.This site summarizes the latest official government national 2014-2024 projections for labor force by age and ethic group, industry, and occupation. Links are provided for additional labor force demographics, major industry and occupation sector, and the industries and occupations with largest or fastest growth.
This site summarizes the latest monthly national workforce data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Narrative and tables include unemployment rates by age, sex and race; length of unemployment; part time and discouraged workers; employment by industry; length of workweek and average hourly earnings. Links to accompanying data tables provide detailed information on these and related workforce categories.
This site provides the official government national information on hundreds of occupations including number of jobs and job outlook, duties, education and experience requirements, pay, and sources of additional occupation.
This site provides two and ten year occupational projections for each state and occupation.
All states have similar (but not as detailed) workforce trends and related data as the Bureau of Labor Statistics but their information is provided in different formats and reports. This site provides the link to the state agency research bureaus that compile that information which can then be accessed for the various reports for their state, metropolitan areas, and counties.
These videos show the types of work people do in nearly 550 careers, organized by the 16 career clusters recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. The videos are being updated and are also available in Spanish, and include some industry videos, occupations by educational level and definitions of various O*NET skills and abilities of interest to employers.
The site contain videos of interview with persons in selected careers.
This site houses more than 300 videos organized into 17 different clusters. These are “home made” movies in that Dr. Kit himself and some of his followers have contributed to the site.
The website features thousands of videos of people doing their jobs and provides statistical data on job forecast and career information. The website (made by teens, for teens) is educational in nature, while also engaging with elements of entertainment. One interesting feature is the ability to sort videos by various criteria including interests.
This site contains videos and information on careers for kids, grades K-5, teens, grades 6-8, teachers and parents.
This site, created by South Carolina Educational Television, features an assortment of media content for K-12. It contain career and educational videos, audio files, and other educational offerings.
This sites focuses on videos that are related to college degrees. The site also has videos on several participating universities and helpful hints like how many schools should you apply to, how to get along with your roommate, etc.
Over 600 of the best stories, tips and advice from young people across Canada and the U.S. have been “crowdsourced” to help young people find careers they will love. Each career story starts with “In high school, I wanted to be...”
This site has numerous videos in a variety of areas to include nearly 600 in various career paths and how to find a job.
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