To help students achieve these goals, school counselors frequently use a self-directed career interest inventory, like Holland's Self-Directed Search (Holland, 1985) as a part of classroom career guidance. Typically, these instruments help students become more aware of themselves their interests, personality, and values; relate these characteristics to possible occupations; expand the number of occupations that they are considering; and stimulate their career exploration behavior such as talking with parents or teachers about possible occupations. These instruments are particularly attractive to school counselors in schools with limited resources who wish to provide career guidance at a low counselor time investment. This article describes one of these instruments, the Career Key (Jones, 1997)--a free public service on the Internet--and its potential for helping students worldwide.

The Career Key (CK) (www.ncsu.edu/careerkey) assesses individuals' resemblance to six personality types: Realistic (R), Investigative (I), Artistic (A), Social (S), Enterprising (E), and Conventional (C) (Holland, 1995.) Users respond to questions regarding their interests, self-view, abilities, and values. Their responses are computer-scored for the RIASEC types. Based on their resemblance to each of the six types, users are directed to occupations that most closely fit their profile. They check those in which they are interested, and a personalized list of occupations is created. Each of these occupations is linked to the section in the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH)(U.S. Department of Labor, 1998) in which that occupation is described: the nature of the work, its job outlook, training required, related occupations, and other vital information. The CK is the first and only computer-guidance system with this link to the OOH. CK users can also go to various educational modules to learn about such topics as career exploration strategies and decision making.

Another benefit of the CK website is that users can print out an 8-page paper-pencil, camera-ready version of the CK. This has been particularly helpful to counselors, educators, and other youth leaders who make multiple copies to use with their students or clients. There are no royalty or licensing fees as long as the copies are used for educational, nonprofit purposes.

Studies of the original Career Key published in 1987 (Jones, 1987, 1989, 1990, 1993) showed that its psychometric characteristics, helpfulness, and effects were similar to other instruments of this type. The results of the first study of the Internet paper-pencil version have just been analyzed and are quite promising (Jones, Sheffield, & Joyner, 1998). When eighth grade students' satisfaction with the CK was compared with those who took the Self-Directed Search Career Explorer (SDSCE; Holland & Powell, 1994) and the Job-O Enhanced (Job-OE; Cutler, Ferry, Kauk, & Robinett, 1995), there were no significant differences. The students gave all three instruments positive ratings. The majority of them reported that it was a good use of their time, that they would recommend to their friends, and that it encouraged them to learn more about occupations.

Among the other comparisons made between the instruments, in no instance was the SDSCE or Job-OE found superior to the CK. On the other hand, the CK, when compared with the other two instruments, (a) suggested a greater number of occupations to the students and (b) took less time on average to complete (the means were: CK = 25 min., SDSCE = 57 min., and Job-OE = 72 min.), allowing more time for other career guidance activities.

The CK has become a popular website for young people and adults. It has recorded over 300,000 visits in the past 20 months. The CK has also attracted international attention. Requests for information have been received from Australia, South Africa, Canada, Spain and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (Hong Kong). The next section describes the Career Key project in Hong Kong, which illustrates how the CK can be developed to benefit middle school students worldwide.