1/10/2009

Career Cruising pilots Ability Profiler in South Dakota

South Dakota’s students and educators now have pilot access to Career Cruising’s new online Ability Profiler. The Ability Profiler helps students identify their strengths, their skills in need of improvement, and how their abilities match those of individuals in careers that interest them.

"The Ability Profiler is another critical piece of the career puzzle which provides additional clarity to students' choices and brings their future career plans into better focus,” says Joanne Ustad, the counselor for the Vermillion School District.

This new assessment is an electronic adaptation of the widely-used O*Net Ability Profiler developed by the National Center for O*NET Development and the US Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration. The Ability Profiler directly gauges students’ abilities in six key areas: arithmetic reasoning, verbal ability, spatial ability, computation, clerical perception, and form perception.

After completing the assessment, students are provided with their Ability Profile. They can then explore the relationship between their abilities and the abilities of individuals in the careers that are of interest to them. This information is saved in students’ portfolios, and is available to them as they develop their post-secondary and career plans.

"The Ability Profiler takes what they've already done and just gives aditional information about the students' fit with each career - not forcing them to rule anything out, but giving them a realistic picture of the requirements," says Pam Tiefenthaler, a counselor in South Dakota.

South Dakota educators with questions about the Ability Profiler should contact Career Cruising.