Career Decision Profile®
The Career Decision Profile (CDP) is used to help you describe where you are today on your career decision making journey – your "career decision status." It covers three areas:
How decided you are in making a career decision
How you feel about where you are in the process of making this decision
Your career decision needs:
Self-clarity
Knowledge about careers and education programs
Decisiveness
Career choice importance
Each scale is briefly described below to help you understand how you can use it to further your own career decision making.
1. Decidedness
Being decided, by itself, is neither good nor bad. If a person decides on a career because of faulty information, for example, they may regret it later. On the other hand, making a career decision usually clarifies future steps in planning, like what kind of training or education is needed. Sometimes delaying a decision is a smart move; for example, when waiting for important information.
Most experts agree that in making a decision like this you should be careful to:
Creatively consider a wide range of alternative actions you might take
Consider both the negative and positive consequences of each alternative
Search for both positive and negative information about each alternative
Make plans for implementing your decision
Use these factors in weighing the meaning of your score on the Decidedness scale.
2. Comfort
The Comfort scale describes how you feel about where you are in the process of making a career decision. Here, again, there is no right or wrong answer.
Most people who have decided on a career report feeling comfortable. However, it's easy to imagine someone who was once decided and comfortable later regretting their decision because they didn't consider and prepare for the negative consequences of the choice.
Likewise, people can feel uncomfortable about their career decision, or lack of it, for rational or irrational reasons. In general, if you feel uncomfortable – say a score of 9 or less – you should take this as a signal for action. This may mean further career exploration – learning more about yourself and your occupational options. You may also want to seek the help of a professional advisor or career counselor.
3. Career decision needs
Generally speaking, scores that are 10 or below on these scales are worthy of further examination:
Self-clarity
This scale indicates how clearly you understand your interests, abilities, personality, and how they might fit with different occupations. Numerous exercises, tests, and inventories have been developed to help people with this. Read Career Key's tips to Learn More about Yourself.
Self-clarity is also related to a person's identity and self-esteem. Counselors can often help people having difficulty in this area.
Knowledge about careers and education programs
The title of this scale is self-explanatory; low scorers believe that they need more information. Much information about occupations and their training requirements is available online and offline. Counselors, advisors, and librarians can also help direct you to good sources.
Also, you'll want to know about the forecasts for job availability, perhaps narrowed down to a specific geographic area.
You can look up all those topics using the following online, high-quality resources:
Career One Stop from the U.S. Department of Labor. Use their Job Search section to search any U.S. city or zip code for specific jobs for local salary information.
Reading online and print publications, however, will not give you the complete picture of a career. Information interviewing and job shadowing are techniques to learn more practical and up-to-date information about a career.
Decisiveness
Low scorers on this scale indicate that they have difficulty in making decisions without unnecessary delay, difficulty, or reliance on others. There are many possible reasons for this; it is best to consult a professional counselor if this causes you difficulty.
Career choice importance
This scale reflects how important making a career choice is to you at this time, as well as how important your future work or career is to you now. Low scores indicate that they are unimportant to you at this time.
External barriers
If your version of the CDP has this section, this scale identifies any barriers to your making a career choice right now. Some barriers may be temporary. Some may be within your control to remove, others may not be. After consultation with a counselor, you may change your mind about the permanency or your control over some barriers. Talking with a career counselor or advisor can help put barriers in perspective and provide ways of addressing them.
4. More resources
Learn more about this 4-step decision making process to help you evaluate your options. Watch CDP author Dr. Lawrence K. Jones walk you through this process step by step with our Decision Making playlist on Career Key’s YouTube channel.
Good luck! You've already made progress by investing your time in the CDP!