Exploratory validity
Tittle (1976) was suggesting that one of the most important characteristics of a guidance
instrument is its exploratory validity that is its capacity to stimulate career exploration.
Card sorting is one of the techniques involving an intense exploration activity on the part
of the client who produces, monitors, evaluates, and uses the results of the exploration
during card sorting. In addition, the technique stimulates career exploration outside the
counselling process as well. Cooper (1976) noticed that people been subjected to card
sorting read more on career options than those who have benefited from other counselling
and guidance interventions.
Seizing a person’s individuality
Card sorting explicitly has a person’s uniqueness in view by avoiding placing that person
in any pre-established personality category or career pattern. The method operates more
efficiently in this sense, since it places people in the position of experts of their own
career situation (Binding, Loveland, 2005). Thus, the method can be also useful for
people with no work experience, so that they could take control of their own career, as
well as experienced people who want to refine their choices and the management of their
career complexity.
Technique flexibility
Card sorting exhibits a high degree of attractiveness for counsellors for its very
flexibility. On the one hand, this allows a counsellor to conceive of and choose the best
suited application modality, and on the other, according to the logical progress of the
process, to offer the necessary amount of input in order to ensure efficiency.
While the interaction between the counsellor and the counselee may target important
issues for the client (social, marital, personal, aptitudinal, value-related, etc.), card sorting
actually focuses on the evaluation of specific occupations, offering thus complex answers
to a client’s vocational indecision.
Immediate and intuitive feedback
Card sorting offers counselees immediate feedback. The process of vocational exploration
based on card sorting offers results in and through itself. Results are produced as the
client goes through the stages (vocational personality, interests, preferences for
occupations, personal values) and do not require external data scoring. The results are
intuitive and immediately comprehensible.
No computer processing
The lack of technology involved in card sorting “demystifies” the decision-making. The
process itself gives clients a logical and rational answer, offering them the possibility to
integrate the relevant career-related information gradually. The results stem from the
clients’ own efforts and reflect their preparedness to find an answer to the issue of career
choice.