Counting Pinecones: CashCrunch Careers (A Homeschool Crew Review)

Early on in a child's life, one question is a constant - "What do you want to be when you grow up?". Some kids know without a doubt what they want to be, while others haven't the clue. Yet one of the most important decisions we make when facing becoming an adult is deciding what career path we want to take. Other big decisions we have to make, such as picking a college and a degree choice, are a direct result of this choice. However, with so many career paths to choose from, many graduating seniors and even college students have no clue what they should choose. Others think they know what they want to do with their lives, only to graduate and realize that they hate the career field they choose because they picked it for the wrong reasons.

CashCrunch Careers from CashCrunch Games starts with an online assessment that has students self evaluate their strengths and weaknesses in order pick a career field that fits their attributes and strengths rather than trying to fit yourself into a job. The goal is to help students find a good career

fit before selecting a college and spending tons of time and money only to find out after the fact that the career isn't something the individual enjoys.

For this review, I requested to have two career survey reports - one for myself and one for my daughter Alyssa. Alyssa is 19 years old and honestly hasn't the first clue what she wants to do with her life beyond sitting in her bedroom watching Cake Wars on Netflix. I thought this would be a good opportunity for her to get some insight into what career fields might be good choices for her based on her personality.

After creating an account, the user is asked to fill out a survey. This survey is 75 questions in length and takes roughly 20 minutes to complete. Each question asks for the individual to reflect on themselves and choose between two descriptions that they feel describes them best. For example, would they describe themselves as Self- Disciplined or would Well-Adjusted be a better choice? Trust Worthy or Likes People? After completing the survey, the website then generates a report based on the answers given. This report includes sections that describe "Career Work Styles", "Motivators and De-Motivators", "Career Attributes", and finally "Career Match" which gives you a list of jobs that should be suited well for the individual. This report can be viewed online, which allows the individual to click on each career field to learn more about it, watch a video about the field, and find a list of colleges that offer degrees in that career field. Or if the person chose, they can download a PDF copy of the report for their own records.

Alyssa's Report

I do believe that the CashCrunch Careers report hit the nail on the head in regards to the analysis of Alyssa.

As a mother, I guess it's easy for me to read her analysis and see where it got it right. Alyssa is indeed creative, very aware of other's feelings and definitely tolerant of the "misfits" of the world (and actually seeks them out). She is pleasant, easy to get along with and is non-confrontational. Without any doubt, Alyssa is not a leader and can be overly sensitive to criticism. I think the report was pretty accurate for her.

Where I think the report goes wrong is when it lists the jobs that would be a good fit for her. After the analysis states that she doesn't want to be a leader and wants to work as a supportive role, the list is almost entirely Management and Administration positions and nothing plays on any of those attributes such as creativity or compassion.

Even more so, when clicking on each of these career fields, it lists the attributes that would make this a good choice for her to look into. The first one lists "leadership" while the second lists "Stress tolerance", two things that the analysis says Alyssa does not do well with.

My Own Report

So then it was my turn to take the survey and see my own results. Unlike Alyssa, I have been in the job force for 20+ years - I already know what type of jobs and work conditions I excel with and what types I have absolutely no desire to work in. For those who do not know, I spent my career as a Respiratory Therapist. For my own personal analysis, I would say that I excelled in high stress critical care situations and I like being challenged. I dislike repetition and mundane hence why critical/emergency care was my specialty. I will also tell you that I am the first to go to bat against a Doctor that I feel is wrong (and have done so many times when it comes to patients). With that said, this was my own personal analysis from CashCrunch Careers.

Okay, for the most part, I can see this for myself. I might not agree with non-confrontational, I'm not big on teamwork, but the rest of it is pretty dead on. I do like to work at my own past, I definitely like an unstructured environment and yeah, I don't like strict rules and without a doubt, I want technical information explained to me in plain English.

I agree almost 100% with the Career Attributes list, as I am the first to tell you I am independent, persistent (just as some of my doctors), I like challenges and I am flexible.

But then we get to my suggested career fields.

It's almost exactly the same list as Alyssa's, with the exception of "General and Operations Managers" at the top. Medical and Health Care Services Manager is second to the last, not that I would have any desire to run a Department because I prefer to be hands on/in the action. And when I look at the attributes listed as to why these particular career fields were listed for me, just like Alyssa, none of my strong attributes were listed but instead it lists things like Leadership. Trust me, I am NOT a person you want leading anyone - the turnover at that department would be pretty high.

Granted, maybe these are just lists of the final position. It's a very rare opportunity that one graduates from college and automatically is placed into a management position. This list makes it seem as if being in charge is everyone's end game and it just isn't. Some like myself prefer the hands on aspect of being a worker instead of a leader.

However, if one ventures away from the report and the list of suggested career fields and instead looks around the "CashCrunch Careers" section of the website, you can find a list of career fields. When you click on those, you are bought to various jobs that fall into each of those career field. So just for giggles, I clicked on Health Sciences and found Respiratory Therapist.

And low and behold, the attributes for Respiratory Therapy is "Concern for Others" and "Independence" - more my style than a leadership position. Also, the Projected Growth shows this is a career field that is growing and needing people, as opposed to the "Slower than Average" most of the Management positions showed.

My Final Opinion

I really do like the Analysis and the list of Attributes that the survey gives. I do believe it gives lots of insight. However, I think the generated list of suggested career fields tends to be off the mark - not everyone wants a management position for one and for two, management should not be initial goal when selecting a career field anyway but should be something worked towards after gaining experience in lesser positions first. Instead of what appears to be a pre-generated list, I think CashCrunch should have instead used the attributes that were generated from the survey (which in my opinion were pretty dead on for both myself and Alyssa) and matched those attributes to the various career fields that can be found in the "CashCrunch Careers" section. If CashCrunch wants to push that management/administration jobs should be the end goal in a career, then simply show how each career field can work into another (ie: Respiratory Therapists can eventually become Department managers).