Helping Candidates Change Careers

Last week a friend of a friend asked if I could suggest a resource for "career planning".  She wanted to change careers but didn't know what she'd be good at.  I pointed her in the direction of one or two resources and then, by coincidence, I got an email telling me about the LiveCareer website. "LiveCareer identifies your career interests and then tells you what jobs are out there for you."

Apparently they are able to provide this free service due to "the willingness of their users to learn about career opportunities, educational options, and other offers".  If you aren't "willing" to receive advertising emails/post from their partners then I suggest you untick the box when registering.

The questionnaire consists of 100 questions and took about 15 minutes to complete.  Each question lists "3 work-related activities" (although some are rather obscure - such as "Taming wild animals for a circus"). For each group you select which activity you like most, as well as which activity you like least. As an example:

a.  Altering garments in a clothing store.   
b.  Supervising difficult staff   
c.  Filing company accounts. 

Once you've answered all the questions you can view your report online (I could see no option to have it emailed to you).  There's a fair bit of (in my opinion) un-necessary information.  However, the core of the report is interesting.  You can see you "Basic Interest Scores" which measure your level of interest as a percentile in 15 different areas (I got 6% for my interest in Science). You them get percentile scores for your interest in being assertive, persuasive, and systematic (organised). Dare I admit to a score of 98% for assertive?  There is then a narrative to explain the implications of your highest and lowest scores across these two areas (telling me: "You wouldn’t be satisfied in careers where you must work with scientific equipment and mathematical logic and reasoning to solve practical or abstract scientific problems")  The final section of the report looks at personality based on Holland’s Theory; which says there are seven different approaches to work.  These are Realistic (Doers), Investigative (Thinkers), Artistic (Creators), Social (Helpers), Enterprising (Persuaders), Conventional (Organizers) and Attentive – (Servers).  The report shows you where you fit into this and gives a description of what each one means.

Whilst the questionnaire may seem to ask some very peculiar questions the report seemed to stack up against my opinion of myself.  I'd have liked to see a list of practically every job that exists and be told which I was most suited too (I did a questionnaire like this in my early 20's and came out strongly matched to a career as a Prison Warden). 

Overall I'd say that it's worth suggesting candidates with a career crisis (who don't want to pay for a career counsellor/coach) take a look.