CashCrunch Careers: Helping You Explore the Possibilities {Product Review}

Although my oldest son is only twelve years old, it’s not too early to help him think about the things that he might like to do when he gets older. He has a lot of strengths and things he enjoys doing, and I’d like to show him how he can use those when picking a career for the future. We were recently given CashCrunch Careers from CashCrunch Games to review. My son and I both explored what this program has to offer and I’d like to share our review with you today.

About the Product

CashCrunch Careers is designed to help answer the age old question: “What would you like to do with your life?” Using data research from the US Department of Labor and recruitment tools from the corporate world, they have combined them into a product that will provide answers to this most popular and common question. The program begins with the completion of a survey that takes about 15 minutes to compete. It is simple—simply asking the taker to pick between two different words and asking them to determine which applies best with them. Once the survey is done, the program opens up an evaluation which shares the results of your answers. This includes sharing the types of work environment may be ideal, strengths the taker may have, people skills, motivators/demotivators, career attributes, and finally presenting the top 20 careers that would be best suited based on the survey results. 

These career options can then be explored further, including Videos and College links to provide further information about the career and the education requirements. There is a video available to show you how to get the most from the CashCrunch Careers report.

Our Thoughts about the Product

Taking the survey

I followed the directions from the CashCrunch Careers website to get logged in and set up. Once in, the whole process begins with taking the survey. I went through the process first to be able to advise my son on how to do it later. I’m glad I did, as several of the words on the survey were words he didn’t know the meaning of. But as promised, the survey takes 15 minutes or less. Once done, the program transitions to providing you the results of the survey. You are able to print off the results for your own records if desired. 
The results provide you with a glimpse into what career options might be a good match with the results of your survey. My report highlighted things like “Your responses tend to indicate that you thrive in team environments” and “you tend to make a good first impression” and “Because you are so helpful, generous, and easy to get along with, people are usually quite willing to follow you and implement your ideas.” 
I read it to my husband and he said it was pretty accurate actually. I felt the same. Not bad for just using a brief survey with simple picks between words.
Continuing on in the report are the areas like “motivators and de-motivators.” In this section, the report uses my answers to examine things that would motivate me, versus stifle me in a job. I agreed with its explanation of things I would enjoy in a job—like having energy and leadership skills, having energy and stamina to finish jobs, being willing to lead, ect. But interestingly enough, I don’t agree with the later part of my “weaknesses”, as I don’t find them accurate. And my husband agreed with me there too. You do not prefer to look too deeply into things, or to get bogged down in details. You are better at predicting the immediate effects of a proposal on you or your group, and less experienced with predicting longer-term implications for the entire organization.
He says I actually spend too much time thinking long term! Says it’s why I worry too much sometimes. LOL. I agreed with all my things on my motivators and de-motivators lists!  
The third portion of the report analyzes words I identified with from the survey and how they fit into my top attributes. Interestingly enough, I think I agree 100% with these as they are how I always answered questions growing up as I applied for jobs. My highest attributes were Leadership Orientation, Adaptability/Flexibility, Cooperation, Concern for Others, and Social Orientation. Remember those old long personality tests and designated you as either a Lion/Golden Retriever/Beaver/Otter? This is classic Lion/Otter here. Which were ALWAYS my results. ;)
The fourth section of the report was to share careers which matched the best with my work styles and attributes. There are 20 categories of jobs to be matched with—these are overarching job categories—NOT actual specific jobs. The report ranked the categories for me in order of best matching my work styles and attributes. The top 5 categories for me were: General and Operations Managers, Advertising and Promotions Managers, Marketing Managers, Sales Managers, Public Relations Managers. From this point on, you are able to click on each of these categories to explore more about the career and education requirements for it through videos and college links.  Clicking on my top category, opens up a page with three tabs: course, colleges, video. Clicking the Course Tab shares the projected growth of the occupation, projected need, tasks, activities, and key attributes, abilities, work values, and skills needed to be in that job set. Clicking the colleges tab, shows colleges offering degrees in that field, and clicking video provides more information about the career category itself.
Okay—so this was me. I think it was pretty accurate, and considering my previous jobs had me in customer service and sales, I would say pretty accurate!
But what about my son? At 12, he’s still learning about his likes and dislikes. So how accurate would it be in predicting HIM?

My son taking his survery

Well we definitely do NOT have the same results which I found interesting and actually accurate as we have definite different interests. His initial summary based on his survey included things like “Your ideas and innovations are usually well-received, particularly when you clearly link them to team goals” And “Although you constantly question the usual way of doing things, people tend to accept this because you are equally open to being proved wrong.” We snickered at this because while we agree he ALWAYS questions about the way we do things, he HATES being proved wrong. LOL. In general, the summary called him a creative thinker—and yes! This is definitely him!

My son's full paragraph summary

His motivators and de-motivators were pretty spot on too. It says things like him being logical and effective in thinking through problems, being creative and using alternative thinking to come up with new ideas and solve problems. This is definitely him. We absolutely cracked up when it said “when things go wrong at work, your emotions can be difficult to control.” If anything sums him up—it’s THIS statement! LOL. All in all, we definitely agreed with his motivators/de-motivators lists. 

(click to read more clearly)

I found his third category very interesting where it lists his strongest attributes. His were leadership orientation, initiative, innovation, persistence, and cooperation! He and I only shared TWO things! 

In the fourth category of career match, it gave him the same answers as I had. I was surprised about that. All he cared about was that “Farmers and Ranchers” was #11 on the list. And since THAT is his career of choice right now, he was just glad to see it make the list.

His Top 20 Career Categories

He clicked on Farmers and Ranchers and explored the extra information it provided, including watching the video.

  So what do I think? Well, there were a few things I would change. First, this test was honestly NO different than a personality test. It simply takes the things that match our personality and then shares how those are our strengths or weaknesses. While good to know, it really needed MORE to accurately match up careers. I would next ask actual questions about preferences: Are you an inside or outside person? Do you like desk jobs or being able to use your hands? Things that could then help narrow down the information even more. If someone gets all these management careers as their top thing, but HATES being inside or sitting down all day—well, then it’s not a good career match at all! I understand that the program is giving general categories that can be explored further--but when 95% of them have the word "manager" or "management" it's unrealistic!
This is my son. He would HATE being stuck behind a desk or inside a building all day long. He’d HATE it. Yet his top 10 job categories were just that! Nothing was hands on except maybe Farmers/Ranchers. Everything was management related. And I think that’s rather ignorant of the job market. Because there are much fewer people who actually can do management or even WANT to do it. AND management is more of a 10+ years down the road thing for jobs. But this career match makes it like, if you get a degree, you can do this as a job right away! And it doesn’t work that way 9/10 times.
I would have loved seeing more actual blue collar jobs featured in this list. My family is all about blue collar jobs as it is what is available here in our location and the interest we have in jobs. We work with our hands! So I think there needs to be changes made to promote those kind of jobs as viable careers---for one thing, that is where the projected job market would be HIGH growth! Most of these managerial careers are low projected growth.
I would also like a way to narrow down the college options to be close to where you live. You have to manually do that—and it’d be nice to have a filter system where you could type in your state or zip and find the colleges closest to you. 
In general, I think this IS useful. But needs to be improved to give a better picture of what is TRULY available in the world of jobs. Not just all the management. But include the blue collar options too—not just lumped under “Gaming Managers” or “Construction managers”. List construction! Or Engineering! Or computer science! Or Electrician! Real jobs with real needs!
I also think they need to update their videos. The videos clearly were not made recently and could use an update. 
Finally, I honestly don’t think I can recommend this product at the cost it’s at right now. It is too expensive to pay for a report based on simply your personality. Yes, they do some of the work for you in providing information for you to explore some careers further, but it just isn’t accurate enough in what it offers to pay that price. I could do a similar survey/quiz for free online and get very similar information. The career aptitude test in school are even more in depth than this because they ask more nitty gritty questions. So I think that for the price you pay for this, there should definitely be MORE detailed information offered.

Want to Know More?

I have shared with your our review of CashCrunch Careers from CashCrunch Games. I would encourage you to read other crew members review on this product to get an even better idea of what it has to offer!

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