
Student career success—find your pathway to career success and satisfaction!
“The best way to predict your future is to create it.” — Abraham Lincoln
Choosing your career is difficult. Finding career success is even more difficult. Our Career Success Program supports young people in fulfilling their potential and finding rewarding careers. Our program provides vital information on every milestone – from curiosity to getting a job. So, explore the resources (most are free) on this site.
After graduating from high school, most students struggle in deciding whether to go to university or college, enter a trade or join the workforce.
Most students do not get it right the first time. According to the National Center for Education Statistics:
- 80 percent of students end up changing their major at least once,
- on average; college students change their major at least three times over the course of their college careers
- 55 percent of students who enroll in college leave with a degree
- on average; it takes a student six years to complete a four-year degree
Can you afford the extra time and three do-overs?
Moreover, over half of the students who graduate feel they graduated with the wrong degree. Your investment upfront can save you time, money, and years of frustration. The venture will ultimately help you find career satisfaction. We use the power of SuccessFinder to guide you in selecting the right career path.
Read the special report by Mark Cannon, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University — How To Help Students Avoid Career & College Misfires. Cannon targets High School principals and counsellors.
Career Choice Involves Many Factors
Many factors, including life context, personal aptitudes, and educational attainment, influence your career choice. Whether college-bound or work-bound, meeting the challenge of this developmental milestone is critical in high school student's lives.
A qualitative study, Factors Influencing Career Choices of Adolescents and Young Adults in Rural Pennsylvania, explored factors that play crucial roles in rural high school seniors' and young adults' career choice process. They found the cultural and social context of family and community to be instrumental in how youth learn about careers and influential in the choice process. Extension strategies that target parents and community to increase their involvement in youth career selection promoted sound career decisions.
Calculate Your Expected Return on Investment (ROI)
In 2017 college grads made, on average, $49,785 annually.
Moreover, only 10% of students will graduate in the time that they initially expected.
Choosing the right program the first time save time, money, and much frustration. Tuition fees will range from $5,000 to $50,000 per year. However, there are additional expenses. Here are the national averages
- tuition fees - $33,215
- accommodation and board - $10,872
- books and study supplies - $1,048
- personal expenses - $2,454
So, the budget is $47,441 per year. Our ROI Calculator lets you customize amounts to match your situation.
The savings that result if you complete your program create an expected ROI. We do not in any way warrant or guarantee the success of any action you or the student take in reliance on our assessment or recommendations. The calculator is simply to provide an overview.
Valuable advice — Who should plan and choose the career of a student?
We see a need to take a more assertive role in providing insights for student career success. It starts with helping youth in making a career choice that leverages their behavioural strengths. With over four decades of research, we can predict success with an average validity rate of 85%. Why? Unlike most personality assessments that typically assess fewer than 20 behavioural characteristics, we have 120 components that capture a complete profile for each test taker. Once we have this very detailed behavioural profile, we match it against our expert models to provide valid results for the individual. The quantity and the quality of data are the foundations from which we extract our high-value insights.
Parents' Role
Engaging parents in understanding the vital role they play in students' occupational choices and how to play it is essential. It is a team effort—led by the student and supported by parents and our experts. Career programs at schools have been less than adequate—otherwise, 80% of students would not switch their college majors. We offer collaborative programs with innovative strategies that engage youth, parents, and associations in managing collaborative partnerships that can help students' career selection and their successful transitions into workplace roles.

Goal Setting
In an interview between John Assaraf and Lewis Howes, Assaraf shared what his first mentor taught him about goal setting.
After setting his goals in several areas of his life (e.g., health, spirituality, finances, relationships, service, etc.), and for 1, 3, 5, and 25 years out, Assaraf's mentor asked him, "Are you interested in achieving these goals, or are you committed?" to which Assaraf responded, "What's the difference?"
His mentor responded:
If you're interested, you come up with stories, excuses, reasons, and circumstances about why you can't or why you won't. If you're committed, those go out the window. You just do whatever it takes."
Assaraf's life probably isn't exactly how he planned it to be when he set those goals in 1982 at the age of 19. However, I'm confident those goals propelled him to where he is today.
He was playing and planning a much bigger game than most people and writing a much different story.
Career Success Assessment

"Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options. This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready — for nothing in particular.” — Billionaire Peter Thiel
Our career assessment tool helps to determine your likelihood of success and satisfaction in any field. Powered by SuccessFinder, our powerful analytics look at your distinct behavioural traits to see what careers may be right for you. The American Psychological Association gave the system the highest accuracy rating of Category 1!
By answering over 340 scientifically-designed forced-choice questions, you will learn what you like to do and how you do it. This information will put you in a better position to select academic courses, make career decisions, apply to universities, and enter the workforce.
Predicts Career Satisfaction And Success
SuccessFinder predicts career satisfaction and success based on discriminating factors — behavioural traits and competencies. It compares your profile with high performers in various fields.
SuccessFinder:
- measures 85 statistically distinct behavioural traits(few other career assessment tests measure more than 30)
- assesses 35 specific career theme scales(few other tests measure more than 10)
- determines 26 behavioural competencies
- deals with 2,500 occupational titles (few other tests measure more than 200)
- has 500+ career success benchmarks
Leverage your unique strengths for career success
Using our strengths is the key to career satisfaction
Career Advisor
Once you complete your assessment, you have the option of a one-on-one career consultation with a certified SuccessFinder professional!
Meeting with our CareerSuccess professional provides a unique opportunity to receive critical insight into leveraging your behavioural strengths to achieve career satisfaction. It is setting a strong foundation for your future career success. Once you have found your career, we offer a personal development plan to guide you through what is needed to progress toward your career goal.
What's Next?
For high school students, we offer:
- an assessment to assist you in considering what you will do after graduation
- the top five themes that match your behavioural traits
- an assessment of career potential in a given area
- a feedback session
Changing area of study
We offer:
- an assessment to assist you in considering what you will do after graduation
- the top five themes that match your behavioural traits
- an assessment of career potential in a given area
- feedback session
Entry to the profession
For students graduating from university, we offer:
- an assessment to assist you considering what you will do after graduation
- the top five themes that match your behavioural traits
- an assessment of career potential in a given area
- a one-year development plan
- a feedback session
Student Career Success Resources — Explore Your Options

Start By Assessing Your Hobbies
A good starting point is to examine the hobbies that you enjoy. They may lead to a possible a career.
Click on the tabs below to explore the following resources:
- The Index of Learning Styles is an online survey instrument used to assess preferences on four dimensions (active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, and sequential/global) of a learning style model
- The Hamilton Project shows you where you can go with your degree.
- The Career Handbook is the counselling component of the National Occupational Classification (NOC) system.
- O*NET — OnLine has detailed descriptions of the world of work for use by job seekers, workforce development and HR professionals, students, researchers, and more!
- Freshman Survey — For five decades, researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles have surveyed the nation's incoming freshmen to learn more about their backgrounds, views, and expectations.
Would you like to find out:
- What are your hobbies? Could they become a career?
- What are your learning preferences?
- How much money should you expect to make?
- What else can you do with a given degree?
- What jobs need to use your current talent stack?
- What jobs would use your current talent stack?
- What gaps are there in my talent stack to get a given job?
- What are the challenges that a freshman in college is likely to face?
- And much more . . . .
All great questions as you embark on your career journey. Each Tab contains a resource to help you on your career journey. Click on the images within each tab to start your journey of discovery.
Younger workers often earn less than older workers, whose wages may increase as they gain experience and become established in careers. An interactive tool, from an advisory group, called the Hamilton Project shows how occupations and earnings in your major differ by sex and age. The accompanying paper: Putting Your Major to Work: Career Paths after College sets out the economic analysis used in the interactive tool allowing users to explore career outcomes by major.
Tool for career exploration and job analysis
Backgrounds and Beliefs of College Freshmen
For five decades, researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles have surveyed the nation's incoming freshmen to learn more about their backgrounds, views, and expectations. Use this interactive graphic to see how their attitudes and self-images have changed since the 1960s, as measured by UCLA's Cooperative Institutional Research Program, part of the Higher Education Research Institute. Read their latest survey here. Click on the image below and see how your answers compare. For example, In deciding to go to college, how vital a reason was ... to be able to get a better job? — 85% said it was essential—the highest ranked reason.
The Index of Learning Styles indicates your learning preferences on four dimensions (active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, and sequential/global) of learning styles. The instrument was developed and validated by Richard M. Felder and Barbara A. Soloman. It will take you about 10 minutes to answer the 44 a-b questions. You get the results immediately. Your learning style profile indicates possible strengths and tendencies or habits that might lead to difficulty in academic settings. The profile does not reflect your suitability or unsuitability for a particular subject, discipline, or profession. Such labelling is at best misleading and can be harmful if the student uses the label as justification for a major shift in curriculum or career choice. The four-page handout “Learning Styles and Strategies” explains the results. The frequently asked questions. Include questions about its origin, reliability, and validity, availability for use in teaching and research, and how businesses may license it.
Ready to get started?
Find out what careers would be a good fit for you! You can see what field you would be best suited for and receive a detailed list of possible career choices explicitly tailored to your strengths. The CareerSuccess assessment measures 85 behavioural traits with up to 85% accuracy and comes with a 1-hour consultation with a certified SuccessFinder professional. We focus on getting you on the right path to self-discovery for career success and career satisfaction. Get started today!
Your Challenge — What's Right For You?
Did you know that:
- 40% of College students don’t graduate
- 80% of College students change majors — on average three times
- 50%+ of College grads believe they got the wrong degree
- On average it takes six years to earn a four-year degree
Know Your Natural Talents - Identify your unique behavioural strengthens, develop your passion, choose the right college program to build your unique talent stack further, then and leverage your career capital for lifetime success.
We provide free resources and offer insights to navigate the route to career success and satisfaction:
- Powerful Career Advice for Your High School Student
- Who should choose the career of a child – parents or children?
- Parents — Tips you need to know to boost your High Schooler’s career success
- Some postsecondary students and their parents are about to make a $20,000 mistake
- How to help your child navigate a route to career success
- Students — How to Achieve Career Success and Satisfaction
- 5 Essential Career Planning Resources for High School Students
Learn More


How to help your child navigate a route to career success

11 Interesting Hiring Statistics You Should Know

Ninety Percent of People Regret Rushing Career Choice

Why we find it so hard to leave a job—even one we hate
Business Benefits of SuccessFinder
A bad hire is bad for business. It wastes time, and stresses the organization and the person you hired and fired. Our approach to achieving strategy of business success focuses on achieving value for the shareholder and has two necessary conditions: satisfied customers and a satisfied workforce. We drive employee success and career satisfaction.
In addition to avoiding the cost of a bad hire, you:
- Slash onboarding costs with targeted development/coaching right from point of hire
- Increase retention due to better-fit hiring and promotion
- Avoid costly litigation by hiring without bias
- Differentiate high potentials from high performers
- Increase bench strength and know who to target for accelerated leadership programs
- Decrease training costs based on highest-need performance competencies
- Increase engagement due to people operating in their strengths
- Transform your workforce into one focused on performance at every level
We use SuccessFinder in all our talent analytics used for selection, employee career development, succession planning, team development and leadership coaching.
Using performance competencies, we can provide an additional view of a candidate versus a higher performer.
In addition to technical skills, academic background and professional experience acquired, an individual’s natural behavioural tendencies are crucial elements to achieving success at work. Our goal in creating this model is to provide better ways for organizations to capture these natural behavioural tendencies and leverage them to develop the strong, resilient leaders required to drive today’s business strategies. SuccessFinder measures 85 performance traits. The 26 performance competencies consist of three to six behavioural characteristics. The competencies are grouped into five categories. They are very useful for developing a performance plan as they reflect the interaction of the traits.
How the traits combine along with a career theme in different dynamic combinations to predict business and career success. These combinations constitute the complex behavioural trait dynamics that we see in the workplace and can be measured using competencies and a readiness to influence others directly.

Performance competency is the kind of skill set that an individual should have so that he or she can meet the goals of the organization. Measuring performance competency is a tough job for any human resource manager. SuccessFinder makes it easy. Due to the increasingly complex structure of the organization, it is imperative for individuals to have a good and healthy relationships with people across departments.
In some organizations, including behavioural competencies is part of their appraisal as well.
Why do organizations need to understand performance competencies?
Understanding performance competencies play an essential role in succession planning, workforce planning, and training and development.