What is Career Mapper | Where does Career Mapper Add Value? |What does Career Mapper measure? | The Career Mapper Report | An Occupational Titles List | The Career Mapper Job and Career Database | The Life Planning Guide | Applications of Career Mapper | Using Career Mapper | General Information | Features and Benefits of Career Mapper
What is Career Mapper
Career Mapper is a unique software based tool designed for individuals involved in providing advice and guidance to people considering their career, lifestyle and/or future education options.
Career Mapper supports an individual in making decisions about their preferred career path and helps them to plan what they need to do to achieve their goals.
Career Mapper has been developed with input from experienced Careers Advisors at Careerdecisions Ltd and is based on a high quality occupational psychometric measure Prevue ICES. See Prevue webpage
The Prevue assessment is a highly efficient instrument which gathers information about an individuals core abilities, interests and their personality. Developed by Prof. David Bartram and Dr Pat Lindley Prevue is a valid and reliable measure.
For more information on Career Mapper you can download the brochure from our downloads page
Where does Career Mapper Add Value?
A significant and important factor here is that the instrument is based around Prevue - the same measure used by employers around the world for selection and assessment of individuals. It provides valuable experience of the process that most people will experience when applying for jobs.
The combination of Career Mapper and Prevue provides valuable flexibility too. It is possible for guidance professionals to create benchmarks for specific jobs enabling a variety of applications that can be tailored to the support needs of individual clients, for example in advising whether a specific role is suited to a particular person.
What does Career Mapper measure?
Career Mapper contains 20 Scales. These are grouped around 3 main areas:
Abilities (4 Scales)
- General Abilities (this is derived from the other 3 scales)
- Numerical reasoning
- Verbal reasoning
- Working with Shapes
Interests & Motivation (3 Scales)
- In working with PEOPLE
- In working with DATA
- In working with THINGS
The Career Mapper Report
The comprehensive report can be generated within minutes of assessment end enabling virtually instant feedback.
Written in the second person, the report provides a comprehensive set of outputs in three sections:
A report on the candidate results on the 20 scales
- Guidance on its use and interpretation
- A graph of the candidate's sten scores
- An overview narrative - summarising the results
- A Scale by scale detailed description of the individuals scores
A report on the individual's working characteristics including:
- Attitude to Pay
- Work Orientation - Work to live/Live to work
- Risk orientation
- Change orientation
- How do they perceive the world at work?
An Occupational Titles List
This list identifies - from a database of 220 sample jobs - the kind of jobs where successful employees have similar profiles to the candidate.
This acts as a springboard to thinking about and discussing career options and is not intended to predict which specific job is suited to the individual.
The Career Mapper Job and Career Database
The built in database lists benchmark profiles for nearly 220 sample jobs and careers.
The section of report is intended to indicate to the individual examples of the types of jobs where successful jobholders have similar profiles to theirs. Used in conjunction with the life-planning guide this is intended to provoke the individual into thinking about a wider range of career options than they may already have considered.
The Life Planning Guide
A unique and integral part of Career Mapper is the Life Planning Guide. The guides are available in two forms, the school/college leavers' version and an adult version. They can be used on a one to one basis or in-group feedback.
The workbook progresses step by step through the key stages in the career planning process. Firstly, creating the candidates employability profile.
Employability profile
An individual's employability profile comprises several key factors. The core version includes:
1. Abilities.
2. Motivations and Interests.
3. Personality.
4. Personal Characteristics.
5. Knowledge.
6. Skills.
7. Work Environment.
In the Adult version, the Employability Profile considers three additional factors:
8. Relevant Experience.
9. Commercial awareness.
10. Mental toughness.
The Career Mapper report provides information about the first four of these headings.
Once a candidate knows their employability profile this can help to:
- Identify suitable and appropriate jobs and careers and match the candidate's level of knowledge, skills, abilities and their qualities.
- Identify areas for development to be able to access different career paths, e.g. more knowledge, new skills, etc.
- Provide a comprehensive source of information from which to compile high quality CVs and letters of application.
- Provide an "aide-memoire" for preparing for interviews and meetings.
RACPAC
The second stage of the process is to apply a structured approach to researching careers and to making and implementing good decisions about career paths. This enables the client to learn how to use the process themselves.
Research thoroughly to get the facts on jobs that interest you from reliable sources. Analyse to consider all the Alternatives - which would suit you best? And why? Weigh up the Consequences of each possible action.
When you have decided on a suitable job - make a Plan of action.
Action! Implement the plan - work your way through it. But be prepared to review and Change your plans if you need to.
The guides contain detailed information to take people through each step properly
Applications of Career Mapper
The expert report generated through Career Mapper provides accessible and useful information both for the candidate and the guidance professional.
The report supports the candidate (and advisor) through the initial steps of career planning using the Career Mapper assessment as the starting point. It uses two processes to do this:
Firstly, Creating an Employability Profile - the guide takes the candidate through the process of putting together their profile which will then enable them to look at suitable career and lifestyle options.
Secondly, RACPAC - which is a structured approach to examining options, gathering information and making decisions about career options.
Both are described fully in the Life Planning Guide (supplied with the candidate report).
The Career Mapper report and Life Planning guide can be used for a number of applications including:
- Adults - Looking for a Career Change.
- Students - Seeking first steps to a career.
- PA's, Careers Advisors, Careers Guidance & Teachers/lecturers - Looking for tools to support you in your work.
- Parents - Seeking support to guide their children.
Using Career Mapper
Career Mapper is available in 3 different formats - each offering options in terms of flexibility, efficiency and degree of control. These are briefly outlined below.
On-Line Administration
The candidate is able to complete the whole assessment remotely "on the web". An e-mail invitation provides a unique user name and password and a link to the web site. Clicking on the link enables the test.
The test administrator still retains control of the data (results and report), which is returned to them and not to the candidate, via the system. The system has a timed facility and candidates are given full on-screen instructions to assist test completion.
Data can be processed instantly and the report is ready immediately. This can be e-mailed anywhere. This option eliminates most of traditional test administration although the test user still has to ensure that:
- The candidate is the person completing the test
- The candidate completes the test free from interruption and
- The candidate completes the test without any unauthorised help
On-Screen Administration
The on-screen assessment is installed onto a PC or laptop using a CD or email attachment.
Full on-screen instructions are provided and data is processed instantly once imported into the Career Mapper software.
Paper & Pencil
The tests are administered using the combined question and answer booklet. Instructions are read out and the test administrator has the responsibility of timing candidates / clients.
The scoring is greatly facilitated using a simple piece of software that loads onto a PC or Laptop. It takes around three to four minutes to input data from the test booklet onto the system. The data is automatically and instantly scored and the Career Mapper report can be generated immediately.
General Information
Prevue takes approximately 1 hour to complete. It consists of 4 timed abilities sections and un-timed interests and motivations and personality sections.
Reports can be generated as quickly as the printer can do its work. (Preferably laser printers). It is possible to complete the whole test cycle (administration, scoring, report generation) within 75 minutes.
All reports, are produced in PDF format which can be easily emailed or stored for future reference
Features and Benefits of Career Mapper
- Measures abilities, interests and personality in one assessment
- Reliable and valid
- Efficient, fast and extremely cost effective
- Takes under one hour to complete - report ready in minutes
- Comprehensive, easy to read report
- Uses jargon-free everyday language
- Minimum administration needed
- Suitable for a wide range of clients from young people to adults
- No Licence fee, Cost effective
- Well supported
- Can operate the whole package after 1 or 2 days accredited training
- Developed by leading psychometricians