Assess is the AI-powered career assessment inside the Access Careers Centre. Users work through a series of reflective questions about themselves and Assess builds a personalised career profile, then matches them to real careers that suit their interests, skills, and values to give them a meaningful starting point for exploring what's out there.
How it works
Assess is a career assessment built around reflection rather than multiple choice. Instead of selecting from pre-set options, users answer questions in their own words, drawing on their real experiences, preferences, and values. Assess uses those responses to build a picture of who they are and what might suit them.
It works in three stages, detailed below.
Users work through a series of questions across five sections, covering interests, skills, work values and workplace preferences.
Assess builds a profile, pulling together what the user has shared into a structured summary.
Finally, Assess matches the user to careers, ranking real job roles by how well they fit the profile and explaining why each one has been suggested.
The assessment takes around 25 minutes, and users can pause and pick up where they left off at any time.
📌 Note: There are no right or wrong answers. The more openly and honestly a user responds, the more accurate and useful their career matches will be.
What users will get at the end
Personalised career matches: a ranked list of careers chosen specifically for the user, each with a match score and a short explanation of why it might be of interest to them.
A skills and evidence bank: a clear summary of the user's interests, skills and strengths, and the work values that matter most to them. It's a handy snapshot they can revisit, refine, and share. For example, it's useful to have ahead of a meeting with a careers advisor.
Getting started
When you open Assess for the first time, you'll land on the overview page, which explains what to expect before you begin:
The five sections.
Roughly how long each one takes.
What you'll receive at the end.
You can then choose from one of the two following options.
Click Start Your Assessment to begin the questions.
Click Explore Careers to browse careers first, before doing the assessment.
📌 Note: Once you've completed the assessment, you'll skip the overview page and go straight to My Profile each time you open Assess.
Take the assessment
The assessment is made up of questions presented one at a time. Most questions are open-ended, inviting you to type your response in your own words, while some ask you to select from a set of options. A progress bar at the top of the screen shows which of the five sections you are currently on, along with how many questions are in that section.
To answer a question, read the question and either type your response into the answer field or select from the options provided.
If you're not sure how to answer an open question, look for the example answers — you can expand these to see a few realistic examples for inspiration. They're there to help you get started, not to be copied.
The five sections
You'll work through five short sections, one after another. When you finish the final section, you'll see a completion message and be taken to your new profile.
Opening: A quick introduction so Assess understands your situation, for example if you're a student, recent graduate, or changing careers.
Interests: Questions about the kinds of activities and tasks you enjoy.
Skills: Questions that help you describe what you're good at, with real examples.
Work Values: Short scenarios that reveal what matters most to you in a job.
Workplace Preferences: Practical questions about the kind of working environment that suits you.
📌 Note: After you submit, it takes a short moment for Assess to build your profile and work out your career matches. Your results will appear on screen automatically as soon as they're ready, so there's no need to refresh the page.
Save to return later
You don't have to finish the whole assessment in one sitting. Your answers are saved automatically as you move from one section to the next.
To stop at any time, click Save & Exit. When you return, Assess takes you back to exactly where you left off, with your previous answers already filled in.
My Profile
Once your assessment is complete, My Profile becomes your home page in Assess. It's a living summary of your assessment answers, and it includes the following:
Your career snapshot: A short, two-to-three sentence summary of your career direction.
Your preferences: Colourful labels showing your preferred location, work setting, availability, working pattern, and company size.
Top interest themes: The areas and activities you're most drawn to.
Skills and strengths: Your transferable skills, hard skills, and top strengths.
Work values: The values that matter most to you, including your main anchor, your secondary anchor, and any deal-breakers.
Your profile sits alongside your career matches, so everything is in one place.
Your career matches
This is the heart of Assess. A ranked grid of careers chosen specifically for you.
Each career match shows you:
The job title.
A match score, so you can see at a glance how strong the match is.
The reasons it matched. The interests, skills, values, and strengths that connect you to that career.
To learn more about any career, simply click its card to open its full career detail page.
Shortlist careers
As you explore your matches, you can save the careers that interest you most.
Click the heart icon on any career to add it to your shortlist.
Your shortlisted careers appear together in My Shortlist, at the top of your matches, so they're easy to find.
To remove a career from your shortlist, just click its heart again.
Your shortlist stays saved, so you can keep building it over time.
Explore careers
Explore Careers is open to everyone, you don't need to complete the assessment.
It's organised into 15 sectors that cover the world of work. For each sector you'll see an icon, a short description, and the number of careers it contains.
You can use the search bar to search for and select the relevant career title.
To browse Explore Careers, follow the below steps.
🤓 Tip: After looking at a career, click Back to return to the sector grid and explore another area.
Click Explore Careers.
Choose the relevant sector to see all the careers in it.
Click the relevant career to open the full detail page.
📌 Note: Each listing shows the title, a short description, a typical salary range, and typical working hours.
Career detail pages
Whether you reach it from your matches or from Explore Careers, every career has a detailed page with everything you need to know. The page organises information into easy-to-scan tabs:
Overview: what the job involves, typical day-to-day tasks, and the working environment.
How to become: the education and training routes into the role.
Career progression: where the role can lead and how you might advance.
Related careers: similar roles you might also want to explore.
You can shortlist a career directly from its detail page by clicking the heart icon.
Download your profile as a PDF
You can save a copy of your profile to keep or share.
When you're on the My Profile page, click Export PDF, then follow the prompt to download your profile.
The PDF includes your career snapshot, skills, values, and matches. It's perfect for sharing with a careers advisor or keeping for your own records.
Retake the assessment
People change, and so can your results. If you'd like a fresh set of answers and matches, you can retake the assessment.
To do this, follow the below steps.
From the My Profile page, click Retake Assessment.
Click Confirm to verify that you want to start the assessment again.
📌 Note: Retaking the assessment clears your previous answers and generates a brand-new profile, so only retake when you're ready to start fresh.
Frequently asked questions
Question | Answer |
How long does the assessment take? | Around 25 minutes in total, spread across five short sections. You can pause and resume whenever you like. |
Do I have to finish it all at once? | No. Your progress is saved as you go.
Click Save & Exit while in the assessment to stop and return later, right from where you left off. |
What if I don't know how to answer a question? | Look for the expandable example answers beneath open questions for a little inspiration. Answer in your own words — there are no wrong answers. |
Why does my profile take a moment to appear after I submit? | Assess is building your personalised profile and working out your best career matches. Your results appear automatically as soon as they're ready. |
Can I explore careers without doing the assessment? | Absolutely. Explore Careers is open to everyone, with 15 sectors to browse and a search bar to find specific roles. |