M and J, 10th and 8th grades, participated in this review to identify career paths and help them choose what to study through the rest of their school years. One more list of suggestions (they've done other online career placement exams) seemed like a nice way to help point out what they might be good at. My husband took it for informational purposes. He's not looking to change his career, but was intrigued by the other similar exams the kids have been doing recently. I took it because I have a couple of interests I'd like to pursue in college or university classes at home, and I hoped to see if I was well suited to these interests.
M and J were the first to take the survey. They said the site logged them out after about five minutes of use, then repeatedly about every minute for the rest of the survey. I nor my husband had that issue when we completed the survey, from the same computers the kids had used. Maybe it was a busy time of day when the kids did it. It did log me out after a short period of time when I was just exploring the site though.
The survey asks you to choose between two different characteristics in 75 different questions. If you hover over the word it shows one or two more in case you need clarification. The main words are not opposites, so you have to choose the one that is more similar to you. For instance, principled showed additional words of honest and ethical VS supportive which added caring and sympathetic. Some were more difficult to choose between such as goal-oriented vs thorough. The site says you should pick the word that best describes how you really are, not how others view you or how you want to be.
After completing the survey, you will see a report of the results. You will have "forever" access to the results. You can log in at any time and check them as well as explore the site's career information.
I've included my report below. You can save or print a PDF copy of your report, which is only two pages long. It was interesting to compare everyone's printed results together. We pointed out which parts were the same, which were different, and wondered why the system applied some things to us (some characteristics were quite far off from true personalities.) I know everyone was thoughtful while completing the survey though, so I'm not sure why our reports were nearly identical for some portions or way off base in others.
The bottom section is what we're really after here: the Matching Jobs, or how the career would match to your personality traits discovered in the survey. M and J were quite surprised that their results were the same except for three, wondering if they had done something wrong. After my husband and I took the survey we also wondered why everyone received nearly identical lists.
You can click on each job in your online report and see what tasks and activities that job would include. There is also a list of attributes associated with the job, which gives you a little idea of why you qualified for it. Other information includes an overview video of the job - though the videos are dated and poor quality, and a map with a list of colleges that offer degrees for that career. There was very little listed about the colleges and universities around me so I don't think this provides a thorough list.
Interestingly enough, each job is of a subset. For instance, our first suggested job of "General and Operations Managers" is just one in a large list of Business, Management and Administration. With 427 career listings in 16 different categories, I'm quite surprised that our results were so similar. This does fit the job I had when I worked out of the home, but knowing the personalities of my family members, this is not an accurate calculation according to what they are good at, nor do the personality portions of our results fit with this first suggested career. Also taking into consideration how many businesses are in operation in our city, and that all of us got General and Operations Managers as the first suggestion, this doesn't seem to calculate according to public needs, which is what we wondered if it might be doing.
I found more personality info included than I found career info, again, some was surprisingly similar or inaccurate. M and J have done other career assessments online and received completely different results than this site showed. I expected to see more specific career suggestions and perhaps even percentage matches, or at least ordered lists highlighting potential careers. After using this site, M and J are no closer than before to figuring out what they might work towards.
I kept feeling like I was missing something when looking at this site, because the personalization that provides specific career suggestions is not there. The seemingly generic lists we all received were more confusing than helpful. There IS a great deal of career information, but in our experience the site didn't do as well as we expected at pointing us towards even a handful of paths our children could pursue. My husband and I came away wondering if we had misunderstood the purpose of the site. Perhaps the site is better suited to college students or adults who already have an idea of where they are headed and just need a little guidance.
Update: CashCrunch Careers has improved the reports. See our updated reports and thoughts here.
Where to find CashCrunch Careers:
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