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Table of Contents
Forgot your password? Introduction & Theory
Click here Development of the Career Personality Test
Evaluation & Measurement
Development of Personality Career Profiles
CareerMatch™ Development
NewUsers
  References & Additional Readings  

 
CareerMatch™ Development  
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  Introduction  

The CareerMatch™ system required the development of various matching algorithms.

Procedures were needed to compare a user’s score profile generated from one of the four
career assessment tests (e.g., personality, interests, skills, and values) with occupational
score profiles for each of the careers in the database. These matching procedures needed to
help users identify the occupations that constitute a “strong” match with his or her
assessment information by scoring and rank-ordering career matches. In addition, a
procedure was needed for creating a composite score that amalgamated individual test
scores before generating overall match scores.

Due to the variety of score profiles produced by the four tests (that also included differences
in scale and number of variables) several matching procedures were required. At a high-level,
two theoretical approaches were employed in the development of these matching algorithms:
(1) the creation of a Shape Index, which would measure correlation from the pattern of the
scores, rather than the absolute level or amount of each score, and (2) the creation of a
Distance Index which would measure correlation from levels in a vector space.

Shape Index

With some of the tests, it was important that the comparison of the user’s score profile and
the score profiles of each of the careers be based on the shape or pattern of the scores, rather
than the absolute level or amount of each score. For example, with the Interest Inventory test,
there was no concern about directing a user to explore careers that were “under” or “over” a
critical level of interest. Rather, it was more important to identify patterns of interests, rather
than absolute levels. The goal was to direct users to occupations that tended to have the
same high interests, as well as the same low interests – in other words, similarities in pattern
or shape.

When a user provides a score profile from one of the tests, the correlation coefficient serves
as the index of correspondence. The correlation between a client’s profile (X) and a career
profile (Y) is given mathematically as follows:
 Where and and and are the means and standard deviations of X and Y,
respectively, and N is the number of scores to be correlated (i.e., the number of scores
constituting the user’s profile). The correlation indexes the similarity of the shape (but not the
level) between the client and occupation profiles and is the correspondence index most
vocational counselors prefer. The correlation can range from -1.0 to +1.0. A correlation of +1.0
indicates that the rank orders of user and career scores are identical, whereas a correlation of
-1.0 indicates that the rank order of a user’s score is opposite the rank order of a career score.
A value of 0.0 indicates no correspondence between the user score profile and the career
score profile. For simplicity in presentation and greater user comprehension, the correlation
coefficient was transformed into a percentage between 0% and 100%.

Distance Index

When determining the correspondence between a client score profile and corresponding
career score profiles where level is a relevant factor, the matching procedure needs to
incorporate distance as well as shape in determining similarity. For example, in the Skills
Profiler, the level of scores matters as much as the pattern, and therefore needs a second
index to refine the profile correspondence. Here, a normalized Euclidean Distance algorithm
was chosen to determine similarity.

The Euclidean distance between two measures X and Y is given mathematically as follows:

where X and Y are scores from the user and career profiles, respectively, and k is the number
of scores in a given score profile. The d value indexes the proximity of the user profile to the
career profile. Thus, Euclidean distance introduces level to the matching process. The
matching program uses d in the matching algorithm for the Skills Profiler, for example,
because the goal is to increase the face validity of the selected careers by guiding users to
careers that not only correspond to the pattern of their skills, but for which they are also more
likely to be qualified rather than under- or over-qualified.

Composite Scoring

A correlation coefficient algorithm again served as the index of correspondence in

development of a composite scoring system. The computation of the correlation, however,
required a few extra steps.

To calculate the correspondence between a composite user profile and career score profiles
appropriately, two factors had to be addressed. First, the scores on the various tests are all
scaled differently. Due to differences in scaling, the composite correlations between user and
career profiles would likely be skewed. For example, consider a hypothetical composite client
profile comprising scores from the Interest Inventory (six scores, ranging from 0-25) and the
Work Values Assessment test (twenty scores, ranging from 1-5). Without adjusting for
differences in scale, the Work Values Assessment will naturally produce higher correlations
and influence the composite score more than the Interest Inventory. Therefore, the scores for
each test under consideration must be standardized within each measure before calculating
the composite correspondence.

Second, because each test yields a different number of scores to the composite score profile,
the correlation between a user profile and a career profile will primarily depend upon the
measure that contributes more scores to the profile. Therefore, the composite algorithm
needed to correct for differences in the number of questions as well scale.

The solution was found in counter-weighting and averaging correlations such that differences
in the number of questions, as well as scale, were offset. A mean weighted correlation,
however, is not a final index of correspondence. Whenever one averages correlations, one
typically applies Fisher’s r to z transformation to each of the correlations before averaging, and
the Fisher inverse transformation after:
 To summarize, the mean index of correspondence between a user’s composite score profile
and a career’s total score profile was calculated by (a) determining the correlation between
the user and career profiles for each test, (b) transforming each of those correlations to Fisher
z values, (c) calculating the mean of the Fisher z values, and (d) transforming the mean z value
back to the correlation metric.

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Source: MyPlan.com, LLC, 2019; includes information from the O*NET 20.3 database, 2016. O*NET™ is a trademark of
  the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration.  

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