Screen for Career Decision Readiness

Career Decision Readiness

Everyone wants and needs to provide cost-effective, appropriate levels of service – to avoid over-serving or underserving clients. The CDP helps you evaluate a person’s readiness to make career decisions. Then, you can decide what level of service is best and what services to provide.

You can understand a person’s readiness to make a career decision from two points of view, those factors internal to the person, and those outside, or external.

Internal to the Individual

• Self-Clarity — The need for help in understanding their interests, abilities, and personality… and to relate them to career options,
• Need for more information — Knowledge about occupations, training programs, majors, or other career options,
• Difficulty in making decisions: may need help in learning how to make a good decision or there may be deeper issues requiring professional help,
• Importance of making a career decision; how motivated the person is,
• Self-efficacy beliefs — convictions about their ability to make a decision, to choose a particular career option, or to be able to do it, and
• Mental health issues.

External Factors

Family and friends

• Multiple responsibilities
• Inadequate work/life balance
• Significant others’ needs with a higher priority
• Significant others’ negative influences

Societal

• Lack of support, such as, quality career guidance services
• Discrimination and stereotyping
• Economy
• Lack of personal financial resources

 A “Just Right” Differentiated Service Level Model

Career Key uses three service levels adapted from a well-known model developed at Florida State University. (see CDP Manual).

1. Self-help services
2. Brief staff-assisted services
3. Individual case-managed services

Career Key helps advisors assign these service levels by estimating a level for each client based on their CDP scores, and the kind of help provided for each level.

How CDP scores are related to service levels

Career Key assigns certain CDP scores to the highest service level because they indicate the client has a potentially higher level of need. Barriers and decisiveness have particularly high impact on decision making.

We are conservative in our estimates, so we assign most clients in the Brief Staff Assist category, with the fewest in the Self-Help and Individualized Case Managed categories.  We prefer recommending more service than less, especially for scales that could, in rare situations, indicate mental health concerns.

CDP Scores Mapped to the Highest and Lowest Service Levels

You may find after following up directly with clients that they need a lower or higher service level.  Please contact us with your feedback on our estimates so we can continue to improve our approach.

Individual Case-Managed Service Delivery

If a client falls into the Individual, Case-Managed category, here is a step-by-step service model recommended by professional counselors.

7-Step Service Delivery Sequence

1. Initial interview
2. Preliminary Assessment
3. Define problem (gap between where they are and where they want to be) and analyze causes
4. Formulate goals
5. Develop individualized learning plan
6. Execute individualized learning plan
7. Summative view and generalization

Referrals to Other Professionals

As someone using the CDP in an administrative capacity, it’s important to know when you should ask for help. You want to provide competent advice to your clients.  Although you do not need a special credential or degree to administer the CDP, you should be prepared for advising situation where a certified professional counselor is required.

The individual, case managed service-level estimate can be one indicator that a higher or specialized level of expertise, training and credentials may be required to competently evaluate and advise a client. When implementing the CDP in your program, make sure to discuss how your organization will handle these situations.

Next Step:

About Career Decision Profile > Evaluating Your Program

Related:

About Career Decision Profile > CDP Manual

CDP Manual > Additional Resources

Support > Manage CDP Clients