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Career assessment

The career assessment is a quick and simple quiz to help a job seeker explore careers.

How does it work?

Job seekers select a "Me" or "Not Me" response for each image, and it's matched with a trait like "Adaptable" or "Organized". Each career is associated with a few traits. When results are calculated, each career is given a score to reflect how closely it matches the traits chosen by the job seeker. The three careers with the highest score are displayed.

Matching an image with a trait can happen three ways:

  1. Positive association: selecting the "Me" option for an image matches a "Me" response to the trait (Example: 'Working with customers' -> 'Customer service')
  2. Reverse association: selecting "Not Me" for an image matches a "Me" response to certain reverse_traits (Example: 'Working with your hands' reverses to 'Technical')
  3. Compound association: Some traits are hard to encapsulate in a single image, so "Me" responses to multiple images can also become a "Me" response to a higher-level trait (Example: 'Teamwork' and 'Self-starter' are parts of the 'Leadership' trait)

How can I update the career information?

The career info is managed via a google spreadsheet that is manually synced with the site's database. Updating existing career info or adding a new career doesn't involve any code updates, but adding a new trait or changing the assessment does.

The google spreadsheet

The current production version of this site uses this spreadsheet (current owners Loyola University New Orleans Department of Computer Science).

When editing the content DO NOT change the column headers or the content will not update properly. The columns description, foundational_skills, and training accept HTML formatting. It's recommended to double check your HTML with a tool like https://jsfiddle.net/.

The numbers in the traits column correspond to the id column in the traits spreadsheet tab. To add or remove a trait from a career, add or remove the corrsponding id number from the traits column (make sure they are comma-separated). See below for adding an entirely new trait to the spreadsheet.

Starting from scratch

If you're setting up a new copy of this site, use this google spreadsheet template: https://drive.google.com/previewtemplate?id=1vgqsoXLJ9FSDZamGv-SzDX_xCV3wHY0Lh142nhuZDQI&mode=public.

After filling in the info, go to 'File' > 'Publish to Web' and publish it as a web page. Make sure "Automatically republish when changes are made" is checked at the bottom. Save the link! You can also get the link again by opening the "Publish to Web" dialog again.

Updating career info

To update the information about a career: edit your spreadsheet, then go to the "manage" page & enter the username and password. Enter the PUBLIC link to the spreadsheet (it ends in /pubhtml) (Like https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lMeZZ_vu-xIVKLgo7obKlF0X4iJ3oHkLKl8uIrPsSt8/pubhtml), wait for the link to be validated, then click "Update content". If an error message appears, double check the content format. When the content updates successfully, there will be a message indicating how many careers and traits were updated. You're done!

Adding new career

Add a new row to the google spreadsheet. The columns name, sector, and experienced_range are required. The traits column is required to have the new career be included in assessment results. After filling in the new row in the spreadsheet, follow the instructions for the 'Updating Career info' step above to load and publish the new information.

Adding new trait

Adding a new trait to the assessment cannot be done without additional coding work.

  1. Add the new trait(s) to the "traits" tab of the spreadsheet with an id. Add that id to the traits column of any career you wish to associate it with.
  2. In views/assessment.rb the trait is associated with an image, other traits as a "compound trait", or as a "reverse trait"--the opposite of an image. The name of the trait must be entered somewhere in this file or it will not be part of the assessment.
  3. Assessment images are saved in /assets/images/assessment

Assessment pictures <-> traits

"Standard" traits: If a user answers 'me', the trait is recorded, if the answer is 'not me', the reverse_trait is recorded.

{ trait: 'Following instructions',    # must match name of trait from spreadsheet/database
  reverse_trait: 'Self-starter',      # optional, is 'inverse' of trait above
  title: 'Following instructions',    # text to display with image
  alt: 'Person is looking at a recipe on a computer before they begin chopping vegetables',   # text describing image, for accessibility
  file: 'instructions.jpg' },         # file name of image (in /assets/images/assessment)

"Compound" traits: A trait may be tricky to capture in a single image. Two or more existing traits can be combined to form a compound trait. If a user checks 'me' for each of the components, a 'me' is recorded for the trait.

{ trait: 'Perceptive',    # trait name
  components: ['Detail oriented', 'Customer service'] },  # names of simpler traits

Adding or removing a column from the careers spreadsheet

To omit a specific piece of existing information, 'comment out' or delete it from the HTML.

Altering the columns in the spreadsheet corresponds to altering columns in the database and an understanding of the code. Please consult a developer if necessary.

Steps for altering columns:

  1. Write a migration to add or remove the column (there are examples in the code base)
  2. Update the #bulk_create method in models/career.rb
  3. Update the #career_descriptions method in views/careers.rb
  4. Don't forget to reference it in the html somewhere!

For the changes to be applied after deployment:

  1. Run migrations on the server: rake db:migrate
  2. Restart server/dynos
  3. Update data via spreadsheet