Assessment & Career Exploration: At The Intersection of Aptitudes x Interests Lie the Path to Happiness with Betsy Wills, Founder of YouSci

During this episode of Science-4 Hire, Dr. Charles Handler is joined by Betsy Wills, Founder of YouScience, to discuss what some might call a “pre” pre-hire assessment. For decades Wills has been dedicated to helping people manage their careers forward. This session focuses on YouScience’s origin story and the role of assessment as a core pillar of their value proposition. YouScience is all about using self-discovery as an input into a virtual ecosystem that allows users to empower themselves in their career choices.Wills laments about the brief, even laughable suggested career paths that many of us who took the standardized tests like the ACT or SAT provided can remember. The time has come to reimagine a better, more accurate way to guide those entering college or the workforce into careers they were more suited for than the inaccurate inventories that have been hanging around for decades. Betsy began work with ETS (the makers of the ACT) to create an assessment that would help to assess these new college grads based on highly sought “21st-century skills”. The team quickly realized that there was value to be had by both individuals taking the assessment and the employers seeking skilled labor, and so began their pivot. The search for an ideal assessment to power a career discovery engine landed Wills on the Johnson O’Connor Aptitude Test, a well researched and pedigreed, but with many interesting points of differentiation from traditional work-related aptitude tests.So why assess an individual’s aptitude over their interest?Wills provides a summary of key tenants covered in her TedTalk - notably the “boomerang” nature of traditional interest tests. These tests simply repeat back the rote things that individuals tell the test, often leading to no real revelations. Wills explains the differences, the superiority of aptitude tests such as the Johnson O’Connor test. Such assessments measure core aptitudes across a full range of areas (think musical abilities, psychomotor capabilities, etc.) that provide a foundation for holistic self-awareness. YouScience takes testing leaps and bounds further for all that engage with the platform. Their connection to live employment data and listings, college course catalogs, and their recent merger with Precision Exams, a provider of professional certification tools, makes YouScience’s platform invaluable to job seekers at every stage. Over 40K adult users have engaged with the YouScience platform, creating awareness for the benefits it provides. Throughout the episode, Wills offers listeners insight into how our individual aptitudes play a role in how to best engage coworkers, finding fulfillment outside of the office through the right personal past-times, and understanding what to steer clear of in and outside of the workplace.Science4Hire is brought to you by Rocket-Hire - your partner for launching successful talent assessment strategies and solutions. For more information on Rocket-Hire, visit https://rocket-hire.com Access free resources and reports by Rocket-Hire. Download our most recent research including our Covid-19 Talent Acquisition Benchmarking Report at https://go.rocket-hire.com/covid-19-report. Learn more about our upcoming, in-depth Talent Assessment Market Trends Report at https://go.rocket-hire.com/assessment-platform-marketRelated Resources Connect with Betsy Wills on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/betsywills/Find her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/betsywills/Check out her passion project, Art Stormer at https://artstormer.com/author/artstomer/Watch her TedTalk “The Science of Aptitudes” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp4n2HiU938 Interested in taking your own aptitude assessment?Save 50% by using promo code DISCOVER50 at https://www.YouScience.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit charleshandler.substack.com