I always knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. From a very young age, I knew I wanted to be a teacher, just what that would look like took different forms in my head, but I wanted to teach. My brother, my brother didn’t know. My Mom paid for some very expensive tests to help him figure out what he wants to be when he grows up. Thankfully, finding a good career test for your kids is no longer a matter of paying hundreds of dollars to help them plan their life. Thankfully Truspark career test is here to save the day!
That came out a bit more cheesy than I meant.
(this post is sponsored by TruSpark, all opinions are mine)
I’m curious what are your core motivations?
TruSpark works off of 60 years of research to help people find their core motivations and turn those motivations into career potentials.
There are 19 possible motivations. Which would you say you are?
I’m really curious, please comment and tell me!
Before taking the test I would have said helper and teacher.
Then I would have hesitated before figuring out my third.
I’ll share what mine said after talking a bit more.
Just what is TruSpark?
TruSpark is both a career assessment test AND a career exploration curriculum.
Before taking the assessment you go through the first lesson or two of the curriculum.
My comment: it encourages you to print off the lesson papers, but neither my kids or I particularly used them. So, look to see what you might need.
My kids’ comments: It feels like it’s trying to be cool. It doesn’t take anywhere near as long as they estimate.
I’d 100% agree with that. It didn’t take anywhere near as long as I thought it would to go through the first lesson or so and complete the assessment.
I really like the assessment
It’s story-based, so it’s not like one of those personality quizzes where you click on the answer and it tells you what Hogwarts house you are in (I’m Gryffindor if you’re curious).
No, you tell a story, then it analyzes your story (I’m really curious how they did this), and has you evaluate phrases and decide which phrases you value more.
After working through the process it gives you your three CORE MOTIVATIONS.
My kids had fun saying it in all caps and rather making fun of it. In case you’re wondering, there is a lot of snark going on in this house right now.
Those motivations give you jobs that would appeal to that motivation. Since my kids are wishing for more privacy, I’ll share my results, because yes, I went through the test and curriculum as well.
Overall the three core motivations are more or less who I am. I like fixing things, I adore helping, and I pretty much always end up teaching people. The descriptions of each, are things I enjoy doing.
But the jobs, the jobs were interesting. Some are really obvious, k-12 teacher under teacher, obvious. But, I would not have thought of Financial Advisor under helper, it makes total sense once I start thinking about it, though nothing I have any interest in, but it makes sense because a financial advisor IS helping people. So if you have someone whose core motivation is helping people, but has zero interest in being a first responder or some of those more obvious choices, and really likes numbers, this makes sense.
The career test was most helpful for Superman
I had a great conversation with both of the boys after their test, but with Superman, the conversation was most useful. He’s the one I most wanted to hear his opinion of the test. Of my three teens, he doesn’t have the firmest idea of what he wants to do.
He came out of the test jazzed as it helped him think about what he wanted, and what got him excited. The stories he chose involved leading Nerf Blaster (they are blasters Mom, not Nerf guns) wars and planning strategies.
We had a great conversation talking about how he enjoys solving problems and figuring out the best way to use people’s skills. As I’m listening to him talk, I was scanning the suggested jobs and none of them were ones I’d have suggested to him, and he could see those as jobs he might be interested in.
That picture is him finishing up the career exploration curriculum and finding out more about one of the jobs they suggested in there (he plans to look back more at the jobs as he gets more serious about finding a college in the all too near future).
Too long, who is this for?
I know, I’ve been talking a lot. Sorry, I’m trying to give you the best idea of what this looks like, and why it’ll help you.
I shared how excited about this I was on Facebook and a friend asked me for a better take, I think she was trying to get a feel if I thought it was helpful for my kids who knew what they wanted to be, OR trying to figure out if this was for her kids.
So here it is in bullet points:
- If your kid isn’t really sure what they want to do, this is for you
- If your kids has an idea what they want to do and need focus, this is for you
- If you want to plan your high school to help narrow career ideas, this is for you
This is not for you:
- If your kid is dead set on a career and knows they are, this might not be for you
- If… I don’t know something about wishy-washy and can’t decide
Okay, that wasn’t a good explanation, but if you’re going to over-analyze and not be able to come up with stories for answers, then no. This was a long discussion with my daughter who didn’t like some of the suggestions, but I could see the core motivations she got, AND some of the job suggestions, even if she focused on the ones she didn’t like (customer service rep, 2 of my kids had Helper on their motivation).
I really wish I’d known about this when I had my kids did a “Who do I want to be?” Unit, because this would have been perfect with it (I’m actually going to add this into that unit, which apparently I never wrote about except in a month in review post).
All in all, I highly recommend getting this Career Test
Go check out the pricing, just make sure you get BOTH the assessment AND the curriculum, I think they work well together.
Win your own Truspark Career Test
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