'Where's the career quiz?' A case for the right kind of data

We show BECOME to a lot of people. Sometimes what we hear really drives home how much the Career Development profession has done itself a disservice by buying into the idea that a simple quiz or test should be the dominant Career Development experience.

So when the first response to BECOME's wide-open career exploration, designed to help young people widen (not narrow) their career ideas is, 'Where's the quiz?' - We can be forgiven for getting a bit twitchy.

The trouble with tests

Years of evidence have repeatedly shown that matching theories - and the tests that are based on them - have little accuracy in predicting whether a person using them to choose a path or career will do better. Strike one against tests: the evidence.

You are a unique, complex, amazing human with your own unique combination of skills and strengths. So is each student. Your and their values and priorities are evolving all the time. Add to that each person's complex and ever-changing context of opportunities and challenges of all sorts. Every new experience has the potential to change the shape of your perspective. A test can't see any of that constantly shifting, complex context. Strike two against tests: being simplistic.

Reinvigorating careers

We need to redefine in people's minds what quality career education is. To reset what success looks like for career education programs (within the broader umbrella of Career Development).

We need to think hard about what is measured, because in education, we know that what is measured is valued.

Taking the pulse of aspiration

Quality career education doesn't focus on 'the answer' (one, single career choice). 

Instead, quality career education supports each person to explore actively, and to think deeply about their own future possibilities.

To learn how to see opportunities and to think about them critically, exploring whether or not they're a good fit and why. This is personal and individual to each person, using and developing skills, not simplified into a quiz..

So, at BECOME we're really not interested in whether a young person wants to be a clinical psychologist, a nail technician, a firefighter or a flight paramedic.

We do care very deeply about metrics that show they have explored and thought hard about their own individual future.

Here are some of the things we do care about and that we measure throughout BECOME:

• We care about whether students have explored possibilities broadly, beyond what they see in their own network and neighbourhood. We measure how wide this is but we promote that this is a life-long skill, so it should always be shifting. Up-to-date data can show schools how this is changing for a cohort.
• We care about whether students have come up with ideas that are their own instead of following instructions, following the pack, or aiming only as high as they are 'allowed' to.
• We care about whether they have the skills to ask great questions about their ideas, like 'Does a psychologist really work in a nice office with a big sofa?' 'Do they all live in cities?'
• We care about whether they've shared their ideas with a parent and whether they think a teacher or adult at school knows their ideas for their future. Because supportive adults can make a huge difference.
• We care about whether they can see the point of their learning at school and how this learning connects to their future plans.
• We care about whether they have the skills and opportunity to take action and explore their ideas.

And we really love it when we can see the ideas changing and diversifying within a group over time as a result of their explorations!

Data can help us work out how far we've gone towards these things we really care about.

So we do use data, but we use it to show schools a real picture of their students' emerging aspirations. (Just imagine having that data as a school system from Year 5 and up!)

The aim is always to encourage student agency, skills development and deeper understanding of career opportunities and ideas that appeal to them, personally.

Using data to inform your careers & pathways strategy 

Evidence and data can be useful for making decisions, adjusting plans and setting strategic goals for any career program or student futures plans in schools.

BECOME has launched a new way to capture and analyse student career aspirations and career readiness before and after students undertake the BECOME program.

Data can tell us if our efforts are having an effect, and gives us a peek into some of the patterns in student aspirations, such as a class with an unusually high number of aspiring psychologists.

A core tool in the holistic BECOME program is the BECOME.ME student web app.

This 'exploratorium' lets students have fun exploding and exploring all the interlinked clusters of career ideas and occupations. The teacher-led BECOME lessons and the personalised log in the web app support every student to look for and collect career ideas that they may not have heard of before. 

In the lessons they consider their personal motivations and look for indications that a career might be a good fit for them. They're learning the skills to explore, design and navigate a career future for themselves.

The BECOME.ME app kick-starts wide career exploration.

As of 2025, on first log in to the BECOME.ME app, we now ask students a few very simple questions about their career ideas and their attitudes about the future and about learning at school. We correlate this data into a baseline or benchmark report.

The Program Lead or leadership at the school receive the pre-BECOME Benchmarking report from us with student data and some analysis about what it means. So we'll notice a class full of aspiring psychologists or, more worryingly, a class with very few ideas or aspirations. Either way, we have time to do something to broaden and deepen their thinking.

Changing aspirations

After the BECOME program, we check in with students and collate the data again.

This time we prepare a full Insights Report, which can be extremely useful to a school by providing evidence and insights about the effect of their efforts in career education and student futures.

This Insights Report is often used for strategic planning, to design learning experiences and community engagement about careers, aspirations and limiting factors.

For BECOME, the aim of successful career education is to support each young person to explore as widely as possible, consider their motivations and interests deeply, and engage in new avenues of career exploration.

Students also engage in self-led career experiments in which they gain and develop skills to take agency over their own life and career.

Data can tell us if our pre-program aspiration translates into wider career aspirations after the program. It helps us track attitudes about the future -- which after BECOME usually show positive lifts in optimism, confidence and willingness to take action.

Using this data supports educators with assurance that we are all on the right track!

Read more:

• Empowering Students through Careers Education - An interview about what it looks like in Primary schools in South Australia
• BECOME Help Centre: What do you do with the data? - How data privacy is respected at BECOME

Read more about the BECOME program for schools and how it engages students, or check out our extensive video library of insights from experts in the field.