Career Assessment Tools

If you have followed the Olympics the last few years you will have noticed a country far away with a limited amount of people winning lots of medals (no, not Canada). Australia came 4th in the world 17 Gold, 16 Silver, 16 Bronze. The US was number 1, and Canada came in 1 medal above Turkey (I am not joking!)

This was a huge improvement over the 1992 Olympic games where Australia came 11th in the medal standings, US was second, Canada was 12th and Turkey was 24th. Needless to say Australia is doing something much better in its Olympic program and has the results to prove it.

What are they doing you ask? Well, one key factor is that kids take an athletic assessment test that recommends which sports they play. Other factors include financial support of the athletes and the infrastructure that was built for the Sydney Olympics. Australia has a number of sport scientists who have developed a comprehensive testing system that can put you through 30 tests and compare the results to those of peers and elite athletes. This database will then produce a report that produces ranks of sports, and even positions-cool!

The key here is that it is a comprehensive process and there is lots of data to support the results. My experience is there are a lot of good tools but very few great career assessment tools. The benefit is the ability of the process to be used as an objective benchmarking element to help make wiser decisions sooner. In our process we have tools that help pinpoint the right careers and positions but tools are just one part of the road to success. It is the coaching that takes the tools and produces real results.

G'day mate I'm off to a barbie...

How To Avoid A Career Crash

In our careers it is the little things are not to be ignored. Often it is the little things that lead us to the big things. Paying attention to details demands an active, energetic response to every situation; to the people, places and things. Don't just look-see. Don't just hear-listen.

I was watching television footage of the flight 111 crash that happened outside Halifax. Did you know that most crashes occur because of pilot error? The documentary was fascinating for many reasons. The investigators spent 4 years researching, gathering data and actually rebuilding a plane from the bottom of the sea floor. They brought in the world's largest vacuum cleaner to suck everything off of the floor in an attempt to find clues. They had to pay attention to every single piece that may have been from the airplane, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

One of the things that I have noticed in almost every single career assessment that I have done is the common errors people make in their career choices. They don't hear what is said and they don't see what is often in front of them. I have often heard a client say either they noticed a warning sign and ignored it, or in retrospect they should have paid more attention or done more research when it came to making a career decision.

How much research did you do when you bought your last car?? How much research did you do on the career or company that you were interested in? The Canadian Flight Safety Board spent 35 million dollars and 4 years to determine the issues involved with the crash and ended up making 22 recommendations on best practices. In this case, paying attention to the details led to important changes. It is no different when it comes to our careers. At CareerJoy, we are investigators of career crashes and have developed methodologies and sophisticated tools to look at what has worked and what has not worked and everyday we make a number of key findings and recommendations to our clients to help them avoid further incidents and to increase the likelihood of success.