FAQs
I have taken lots of tests in my life. How is this different from the others?
Most tests are for a grade. Our assessments are about discovering your potential and how to best achieve it. While there are right answers, the results are not good or bad, nor pass/fail. They are guideposts for career direction and decisions. In fact, a low score in some can be an advantage in certain careers. The other thing that’s different is that some of these tests are actually fun!
Continue reading →I know my abilities, so how could your program help me?
Some people may have a good sense of how their academic performance (abilities in math and reading) compare to their peers. But that perception might depend in part on who their fellow students are. Actually in high performing schools, students might underestimate their potential.
Moreover, aptitude tests are not achievement tests. With aptitude tests, we are pinpointing the individual’s potential to pick up specific work skills quickly and easily. These include reasoning and problem-solving, 3-D thinking, creativity, detail orientation, and memorization. Because different aptitude patterns fit different skills, tasks, and careers, the information we provide is helpful when evaluating career options and college majors. In short, we help you gain an understanding of the types of career and work environments that would be a good fit for you.
Continue reading →How do I know this will work?
This is a reasonable, but hard question. Measuring the impact of learning is not easy. Our packages offer direction and insights that last for a lifetime. The results are both immediate and long-term as decisions are made and plans implemented. But we have many happy alumni that are a testament to the value of our programs.
Continue reading →What is an aptitude profile, and why is it helpful to know mine?
An aptitude profile refers to the unique relationship of one aptitude to another. While the implications of each ability is significant in understanding your top talents, the profile provides your consultant a snapshot of what types of work tasks, and therefore occupational choices, incorporate your full range of abilities. This results in a competitive advantage and the greatest potential for satisfaction.
Continue reading →Can you help me find a new job?
We work with our alumni in identifying the types of work they might want to go after. Additionally, we are a resource for job search techniques and an advocate for area job search groups. However, we are not in the job placement business.
Continue reading →How can Career Vision help me with my career change?
We love to work with experienced workers. Most folks consider career change when they are dissatisfied. Our first goal is to use our assessments to help determine the underlying causes for the poor fit. Too often people jump back into what is familiar and repeat a pattern. Sometimes it’s not the career, but the company or the role that one has. Our second goal is to determine the full range of career options, and then narrow the focus to what is realistic depending on your situation.
Continue reading →My student gets help at their high school. What can you do differently?
We actively support the work of school counselors. Unfortunately most have heavy caseloads; the typical counselor is responsible for almost 500 students in a given year. Our sole purpose is to attend to your child and your child alone. In addition to aptitude-based career planning, we also feature customized career portfolios and personalized career consulting to the student and family. We encourage students to share their results and career exploration recommendations with a school counselor, especially when exploring colleges.
Continue reading →How can Career Vision help us explore and evaluate college majors?
There are an overwhelming number of college majors to select from, and college majors often don’t align well with career options. While the tendency for many families may be to choose the college first, the major second, and settle on a career choice later, we advocate a reversal of that approach. Specifically, we help students understand how their natural talents, interests, and emerging values map to specific example career titles to explore – – titles that require and reward important aspects of the student. That doesn’t mean that the career decision has to be made during high school, but it does give students a chance to engage in focused career exploration earlier rather than later. We also provide students with a clear understanding of the college majors and educational requirements associated with the example careers along with excellent resources for career and school exploration. All of this in turn allows the student to orient to colleges that offer majors and internship experiences that are likely to support their eventual career choice.
Continue reading →How do your tests differ from the ACT/SAT?
The ACT/SAT measures are more knowledge-based and measure only academic aptitudes. These are intended to predict success within a college curriculum. Career Vision’s Ball Aptitude Battery® not only includes the general academic aptitudes, but more importantly includes aptitudes that give a more complete understanding of a person’s work-related talents or abilities: different types of creativity, spatial abilities, memory abilities, finger dexterity, reasoning styles and attention to details. Put simply, it’s the difference between a black and white picture, and one in full color.
Continue reading →My son took career-planning tests at school. Why should he go through your program?
Good question. Our career planning model is designed to incorporate the best assessments and the individual attention necessary to help you understand how to integrate and use the assessment results to make good career decisions.
Typically high school and college counselors do the best they can with their many, varied responsibilities. The time they can commit to each student is limited to course selection, college applications and other issues. For career guidance they typically use self-report assessment instruments that focus on interests and personal preferences. They often provide students with reports and provide a group summary about what the results mean. Their perspective on abilities comes from student grades and performance on standardized academic tests and your child’s personal estimation of their talents. Self-estimates of abilities are shown to be less accurate than objective measures, such as the Ball Aptitude Battery®.
Continue reading →When should parents talk to their children about career planning?
There is no magic age for discussing career planning with children, but smart parents start early in the game. Parent should encourage middle-school aged children to learn more about their interests and expose them to a range of different jobs and work environments. Helping children to identify their strengths and encouraging them to ask questions is a great first step in introducing career awareness. At the high school level, a career consultant can help identify a teen’s unique talents and recommend career options and work environments that allow that individual to do their best. Career assessments give juniors and seniors information that can be helpful in choosing types of colleges and academic majors.
Continue reading →What is Career Vision?
Career Vision℠ is a non-profit career planning organization that helps individuals reach their full potential by gaining the self-knowledge necessary to make satisfying career and educational choices. As part of our mission, Career Vision also offers free “Career Literacy” presentations for groups of parents who want to guide their high school and college age children regarding college major and career decisions. They are the only organization of this kind in the nation.
Continue reading →Why is career planning important?
Rapidly changing workplaces and increasing numbers of career choices have made career literacy – – knowledge of one’s abilities and interests, and of the workplace — essential in successfully adapting to today’s job market. The earlier individuals understand their unique talents, the sooner they can apply that knowledge to make satisfying career choices. Given that roughly 70% of Americans are dissatisfied with their jobs (Gallup, 2017), the need for career planning is significant.
Continue reading →What happens in the career planning process?
Career planning is centered around education and possessing the self-knowledge to make a lifetime of successful career choices. A comprehensive assessment of aptitudes, interests, personality, and values paints a realistic picture of an individual’s strengths and helps define attainable goals. A career consultant integrates the test results and discusses customized career and educational options with the client during a personalized, one-on-one feedback session. Following the assessment, the client investigates their options, makes a decision, and develops a career plan to implement it, with the assistance of the consultant if needed. Periodically, the client may return to meet with their consultant to get assistance with another decision or to update their plan annually.
Continue reading →What keeps parents from discussing career planning with their children?
Several factors can cause parents to shy away from these discussions. Parents often worry about the fear of being overly directive toward their children. Plus, there are preconceived notions that teens will not listen to their parents and do not want to be told what to do. As an expert and objective third party, career consultants can frame and facilitate the first of many constructive college and career conversations between parents and their children. Career Assessment results provide the tools for these discussions.
Continue reading →Isn’t career and educational planning from high school guidance counselors enough?
High school guidance departments are simply not staffed to provide comprehensive and individualized career planning services. With a typical student caseload of over 500 and a myriad of responsibilities, guidance counselors do their best to provide students with glimpses of different educational and career choices. However, it is often too general and infrequent to be of value. Professional career planning uses the best tools to provide detailed, individualized information and directly applies that information to selecting college majors, careers, and work environments that will be most successful and satisfying for the student.
Continue reading →College is costly enough as it is. Why should parents invest in career planning?
Research shows that just 1-in-4 of this year’s college freshmen will have a degree in 4 years. (educationdata.org, 2021). This sobering statistic is largely attributable to switching majors, transferring schools, and career uncertainty. Investing in professional career planning and helping students find direction faster than trial-and-error can lead to huge tuition savings for parents in the long run. Even one additional year at a private college at an average of $38,000, and the loss of a first job’s salary at $50,000 represents an additional financial liability of $88,000. Professional career planning costs far less. It’s like an insurance policy to help protect your investment in college.
Continue reading →Can career planning help college students select a major?
Yes. With some universities offering over 150 undergraduate majors, choosing just one can be overwhelming. Objective career assessments conducted by career experts can increase a student’s confidence in their choice, or narrow their focus for directed exploration. Career planning can also provide a powerful sense of direction, increasing the student’s motivation to succeed.
Continue reading →If college is a time of experimentation, won’t my child eventually find a career path?
Few families can afford the luxury of time and money to fund open-ended exploration in the first few years of college. Satisfying and successful career and college major choices have direction and purpose. Once you child understands what careers, jobs, and work environments allow them to do their best and be happy, they can make an informed choice of major and a career path.
Continue reading →Why don’t more adults take advantage of professional career planning?
Sometimes parents assume that their child is getting all the guidance they need from school counselors. Sometimes parents and adults looking to make a change are just not aware of credible career planning resources. Obtaining an in-depth assessment and consulting with a career professional is a relatively new but growing strategy to use for both students and mid-career adults. It’s essential for effective career management. In today’s competitive workplace, this is one way individuals can gain a competitive advantage and know more confidently what it takes to achieve success and satisfaction for themselves.
Continue reading →How is the Ball Aptitude Battery different from other assessment tests?
Most other assessments used in career counseling provide subjective information about interests or personality. While this is very helpful, an aptitude assessment like the Ball Aptitude Battery provides objective information on an individuals’ potential to learn the skills required for specific tasks, which are related to jobs. Knowledge of your unique aptitude profile helps you identify jobs and work environments that are a good match for you, which increases you chance of long-term satisfaction and success on the job. Also, your aptitude profile remains stable over time so you can continue to use it as a sound basis for educational and career decisions throughout your life.
Continue reading →Do you tell my child what career to choose?
We will provide specific career titles to consider and explore, titles that require your child’s talents and reward his/her emerging interests and values. We also provide accurate information about the nature and training requirements of those career titles. Finally, we share our career decision matrix as an educational guide to informed career decision-making.
We don’t tell people what they should be. But we do position your child to make the best decision for him or herself. Clients are pleased to find that our consulting sessions are interactive. New insights may come out during the consultation that prompt consideration of other career options. The more you learn, the more you contribute to your choices.
Continue reading →Who will I talk to about my results? What are their qualifications?
Our career consultants all have a minimum of a master’s degree and are certified to interpret our assessments. Your consultant will meet with you before your Career Consulting Session to tailor your results to your situation.
Continue reading →- Are these assessments right for me?
Are these assessments right for me?
A cornerstone of our assessment program are aptitude tests. These are individually timed tests which are used to predict the type of skills, tasks, work environments, and jobs that play to your strengths. The timing is an essential part of this measurement and cannot be adapted.
It is important for a prospective client to know that accommodations are not possible. Background factors such as physical or mental impairment, learning disability, ADHD, autism spectrum, or 504/IEP plans may impact the reliability of the results.
If any of these factors are present, and because every situation is unique, please let us know prior to registration so one of our consultants can speak with you to determine if our services would be appropriate and of value.
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