Sometimes we make it sound as if discovering one’s professional calling is as difficult and mysterious as the theory of relativity. That may be due to the enormous variety of options contemporary people are faced with and the information overload we are all experiencing. Nevertheless, the answer is not that difficult after all. It lies in our personality makeup. We are simply called to make the best possible use of what we have already been given and further develop our strengths. By using the Career Direct® tool in combination with probing questions and insightful guidance from your consultant, you will be able to develop a career path that’s best suited for you and the place in life you are at.

WHAT IS CAREER DIRECT®?

Career Direct® is a comprehensive personality assessment system based on cutting-edge career guidance technology and statistics. With more than 20 years of development by a team of researchers in the USA, Career Direct® has undergone rigorous testing and validation. Since then more than 200 000 people from more than 45 countries have undergone the assessment and have benefited from its results.

Career Direct® has been designed to be used internationally. Currently the platform can be accessed in 18 languages, therefore customers can fill out the assessment in any of these languages and then have the results automatically converted into any of the remaining ones. The report is 30+ pages long and includes scores, charts and detailed explanations. In addition, the customer is provided with various other resources that will assist them in researching the educational and professional areas that fit their unique personality profile.

HOW IS CAREER DIRECT® DIFFERENT FROM OTHER SIMILAR ASSESSMENTS?

Unlike other career guidance assessments that explore one or two facets of a person’s identity, Career Direct® examines four essential components of career selection: personality, interests, skills, and values. As a result, it is one of the most comprehensive guidance systems on the market today, providing customers with a report that is richer and more nuanced.

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT CAREER DIRECT®

• It takes approximately an hour to complete the online assessment.
• A customer receives a detailed report of 30+ pages (check out the sample report for the student John Dow and the adult Jane Dow).
• Career Direct® consultants undergo a 3-day specialized training followed by six months of close supervision. Only after successful completion of this training are they certified. The certificate needs to be renewed every 12 months by meeting a set of requirements.
• Career Direct® is currently available in 20 languages, including Afrikaans, Albanian, Bahasa Indonesian, Bulgarian, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Croatian, Dutch, English (both USA and UK), French, German, Hungarian, Korean, Latvian, Mongolian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish.
• Career Direct® has been psychometrically developed and is statistically verifiable and reliable; a seventy page Research & Development Manual is available to the public for review.
• The Career Direct® assessment is suitable for people older than 17 years of age. Our oldest customer to date is currently 83 and lives in the USA!
• Close to 200,000 people have benefited from Career Direct® globally.

THE STORY OF CAREER DIRECT^®

Career Direct^® is the brainchild of the renowned American financial writer and speaker, Larry Burkett (1939-2003), co-founder of Crown Financial Ministries.

“During the years I was counseling families on their finances, I frequently observed people in career fields that didn’t match their talents and abilities. It concerned me that so many people were not aware of their strengths and, therefore, were not being good stewards of their talents. I began to hope that someone would develop a program that would help people understand their vocational bent and show them how to make the right career decisions. In 1989 I began working on this task. Lee Ellis, one of our lay consultants, was retiring from the Air Force about that time, and so I challenged him to come help develop the program that is now Career Direct^®“

Christian Financial Concepts, the organization Larry founded in 1976, assembled a highly qualified team to develop a biblically based yet psychometrically sound career assessment. The team, initially known as Career Pathways, investigated other assessment tools on the market and found that virtually none of them reflected a biblical worldview. They also found that most were not comprehensive, covering only one or two of the four areas that their research indicated were essential to making sound career decisions: personality, interests, skills, and values.

Initially, the team used a combination of well-known assessments along with “feedback counselors” to provide career guidance while developing their own assessment. In 1995, Christian Financial Concepts debuted the Career Pathways^® Assessment, which was made up of the CPPI (Career Pathways Personality Inventory) and the ISVI (Interests, Skills, Values Inventory). In 1996, Career Pathways changed its name to Life Pathways to better reflect the whole-life nature of all of its assessment and career resources.

A revised version of the paper test, now renamed the Career Direct Assessment, was published in 1997. Since its creation, over 80,000 individuals have benefited from the biblical perspective that undergirds all of the Career Direct Guidance System materials.

An extensive analysis of data from several thousand Career Direct users was used to refine and revise the factors and scoring that were incorporated into the 1999 CD-ROM version of Career Direct. This greatly enhanced product allowed the user to install, complete, score, and print the assessment on a home computer. Instead of waiting for two weeks, people could now see their results in just a few minutes!

In September of 2000, Christian Financial Concepts and Crown Ministries merged to become Crown Financial Ministries. During the transition following the merger, the ministry focused strictly on refining and consolidating its core financial mission and materials.

In March 2002, there was renewed interest in career ministry and in transitioning Career Direct from a CD-ROM assessment to an Internet-based application. A number of former Life Pathways staff were assembled to redesign Career Direct as a truly interactive online experience. This vision became a reality with the 2006 online release of Career Direct.

Career Direct® has come a long way since those early days. Hundreds of thousands of individuals have benefited from the insightful perspective that undergirds all of the Career Direct® materials. Larry was confident that the guidance system and the many other products that have been, and continue to be, developed will prove to be invaluable resources for people looking to find the career pathway that fit their uniquely created design. He believed these resources met fundamental needs of every individual, the family, and society at large.

Work on the Global Edition started in 2000 when the Career Direct CD version was tried in various South African communities and settings. The assessment was administered to people in South Africa, Namibia and the results obtained were very encouraging. After conducting more than 700 assessments, the decision was made to start developing the Global Edition (GE), which was based up on a consulting model. A new Career Direct^® globally focused website was developed, a consultant training program developed, and the recruiting and training of Career Direct^® GE Consultants across the Globe began. This resulted in Career Direct^® GE expanding into various African, European, Asian, American, and Latin American countries. Today Career Direct^® GE is available in many languages and thousands of consultants are available to guide people in their quest to understand who God designed them to be and to find the assignment that God has prepared for their life.

WHAT TO EXPECT?

• After you contact us and clarify the number of consultations you wish to purchase (and their type – educational for high-school students or occupational for University students and adults), we will send you an invoice with a PayPal payment link or bank transfer details. We will also require the following information for each customer doing the assessment: first name, last name, valid e-mail address, and preferred language in which they wish to complete the assessment.
• As soon as the payment is received, we will send each customer an invitation to register in the online Career Direct^® portal. When they register they will be able to complete the assessment right away or at their leisure.
• As soon as the customer completes the assessment, they will be contacted by the consultant and will schedule the consultation for a convenient date and time. The consultation is live but unless the customer lives in Sofia, Bulgaria or is willing to cover the full traveling and accommodation costs of the consultant visiting their location, then it will be done through Skype or a similar online video service.
• Close members of the family are also welcome to attend the consultation. In fact, we encourage this very much as we are all bound to be selective in our listening so having a close relative or friend participte would allow the customer to continue discussing their results afterwards with someone who also witnessed the feedback from the consultant. Furthermore, it is our experience that a consultation often becomes a very intimate and joyful experience for those related to the customer.
• It is during the live consultation that the customer is granted access to their report as well as all additional resources in the platform. The report can be automatically converted into any of the 20 languages available on the system with just a click. The customer will have access to the system for as long as the Career Direct^® platform remains in existence.
• Your consultant has committed to keeping the results of your assessment and anything exchanged during the consultation strictly confidential. None of that information or your contact details will be disclosed to any third party!

PRICE

There are two levels of pricing – for high-school students and anybody else. Payment is either through PayPal or bank transfer.

CONTACT US TO ORDER YOUR CONSULTATION!

If you wish to order a consultation for yourself, a loved one or an employee, please do not hesitate to contact us using the following form. It would be our pleasure to help you achieve clarity so that you realize your potential more fully.