Prescreening, In-Depth Exploration, and Choice Model

The Three Types of Decision-Making Models

Three types of decision-making models have commonly been cited as potential theoretical frameworks for the career decision-making process. Normative models specify procedures for making optimal rational decisions, aimed at maximizing the subjective (expected) utility, based on an overall evaluation of the alternatives. Descriptive models focus on characterizing the ways individuals actually make decisions in real life and document biases and inconsistencies in individuals' natural decision behaviors that lead to less than optimal decisions.

Prescriptive decision models bridge the theoretically oriented normative models and the reality-oriented descriptive ones by providing a systematic framework for decision making while taking into account individuals' bounded rationality and intuitive thinking. Since it translates theoretical knowledge from decision theory into career counseling interventions, this type of model appears the most relevant for facilitating career decision making. The PIC model is a prescriptive model that outlines a systematic and practical framework for making career decisions.

Prescreening the Potential Alternatives

The goal of the prescreening stage is to deal with the overload of information in career decision making by helping the individual focus on the most relevant information. The goal is to locate a manageable set of promising alternatives that deserve further, in-depth exploration, using sequential elimination. The idea of sequential elimination is based on Tversky's 1972 elimination-by-aspects model, which has been shown to be compatible with the intuitive ways individuals make decisions when faced with a large array of alternatives.

The search for promising alternatives is based on the individuals' preferences in career-related aspects that are most important to them. Career-related aspects are all variables that can be used to characterize either individuals' preferences and abilities or career alternatives. The list of important aspects that should guide the prescreening process includes objective constraints (e.g., disability), competencies (e.g., creativity, technical skills), and core preferences (e.g., teamwork). The model distinguishes among three facets of the individual's preferences: (1) the importance of the aspect, (2) the level regarded as optimal (e.g., “only outdoors”), and (3) additional, less desirable but still acceptable level(s), representing the individual's willingness to compromise (e.g., “mainly outdoors”).

...