The WAYA™ blog

After mentoring seniors at Harvard, San Diego State, Berkeley and Iowa State, it seemed like students weren’t getting real life job clues.

So I wrote this test.

Then I ran ads in fourteen campus papers, offering a Starbucks card to anybody who would take the first written draft.  About 200 college seniors, from all across the country, did.  And from that, I discovered which questions created “duh” answers, and needed changing, which were misunderstood and which were relevant.  And the test was rewritten.  Then we put it up on this website, and got some browsers to take the WAYA profiler.

Strange stuff happened.  A few answers changed.  These students took twice as long online, despite it’s being easier to take this way than in the written test.  And just over a dozen of the questions needed rewriting.  (Read some of the other site pages to grasp the unique WAYA philosophy, which most career counselors and shrinks seem to applaud, so far.)

At first, I thought it was the difference between online and written tests.  But thinking a little deeper, there was a more fundamental change than simply a difference between media.  It was that the first batch were volunteers, who got a modest reward for taking the test.  The second batch came from browsers on the web, who entered keywords while doing serious searches…and most significantly, they paid to take the test and get some answers.

So this lead to another WAYA rewrite.

And this will be a never-ending process of rewriting, as more and more take the test.  Remember, what this test does is isolate those few traits you score as unique and distinctive.  That’s unique.  And those are what matter to your happiness and success.  Match ‘em to a career and life’s great.  Ignore ‘em and suffer forever. 

Yes.  This one tries.  It’s called the “WAYA” profiler which is an acronym for “WhoAreYouAnyway?”

It only costs $3 and if you’re not happy, for any reason, get all your money back.  Plus one dollar!  Knowing yourself better, and how you compare to other college seniors, is critical for a smarter career start.

     One year ago, I wanted to learn PhotoShop.  So I went to the local camera store and asked the clerk which of their books he’d recommend.  He referred me to a woman who supposedly knew PhotoShop in depth.  Instead of buying a book, I hired her as a consultant and yes, she was good.  Sandra D. helped me a lot, and I learned she had recently graduated from the University of California with a degree in Fine Arts.  But the world wasn’t waiting for her.  She was unclear on what she wanted to do.  So she’s selling cameras at retail.  She and her fiance don’t think they can marry for at least several years when, hopefully, their student loans are paid down a little more.

     Okay, in the same month I had a New York trip where I made several stops, so I hired a chauffer and a limo.  During the day we got to know a bit about each other.  This driver, Larry F., had a degree from Farleigh Dickinson in Sociology, earned seven years before, and was hoping to get his student loans paid off in the next decade.  Meanwhile, he lived with his parents, drove a limo during the day and worked some evenings in his parents’ restaurant.

     Weeks later, it seemed switching to energy-efficient lightbulbs might be a sensible thing to do.  I traipsed down to a nearby lightbulb store, and got a couple dozen.  The sales clerk, Angela S., was helpful.  We talked.  It turned out that she’d gotten her degree a year ago from Appalachia State in Advertising.  Now she’s selling lightbulbs in San Diego.  I don’t have any idea how many advertising jobs there are in Appalachia, but have some suspicions. 

     Those random examples are three reasons why college seniors and college juniors should take the WAYA profiler.  It’s designed to force some thinking about careers, and which areas fit an upperclassmen’s set of skills.  Too many kids are drifting through college, accruing nothing tangible except debts.  That’s criminal.  Lives are wasted. 

     Well, after mentoring upperclassmen at Berkeley, Harvard, Iowa State and San Diego State it became obvious that some need no help, but too many others were confused.

     Some had no clue as to whether they should seek out big organizations or small ones.  And that’s more important to satisfaction and success than the industry, title and maybe even the pay.  Yet after trying out fourteen career tests, I discovered that not a single one tries to discover the answer to that basic question.

     So we created the WAYA profiler.  (That’s an acronym for WhoAreYouAnyway.)  It’s different.  First of all, it doesn’t take every characteristic, like, say, extroversion, and tell you that you’re a hermit if you score in the 49th percentile…and then label somebody who hits the 51st percentile as a Presidential candidate.  (WAYA does measure your extroversion three ways, by the way, and even your energy, which no other career test attempts, plus eighteen other traits.  But your profile will just may ignore many traits, since they’ll fall into the middle of that “bell shaped curve.”  Your WAYA profile will focus on those rare places where you’re near the top or bottom.  Those traits matter.)

     That’s the other thing that’s unique about the WAYA profiler.  It ignores those characteristics where you’re mainstream, and, focuses on what makes you unique.

      Hey, that’s what the world cares about.  No other career assessment does this.   

     People who have time don’t have money or power.  People who have money and power don’t have time.  Which group do you want to attract?  That’s why college seniors should keep their resume down to a single page.

     It’s not a piece of paper that’ll ever get you a job.  All it does is get you an interview, and that’s critical.  If you bore them to death with detail, you’ll never hear back, except from those who aren’t in any position to help you.

     That’s the first mistake most college seniors make.  The second, and this is frightfully common, is a boring objective line.  “Seeking a position with a dynamic company that can utilize my skills and education.”  Gag.  Get specific.  Say “Entry level marketing job in Northern Kentucky” or “Inventory trainee in healthcare products,” etc. 

     Yes, you can change that line for different situations, but, hopefully you know yourself well enough to not have too many targets.  Having several is fine.  Too many try to write the objective line to fit every situation which means they fit nobody.  The WAYA analysis helps you pin down the few areas that should be your targets.  Take the WAYA profiler to get this first line right on your resume. 

     Career tests go wrong four ways:

     1.  Most of them force every characteristic you have into an extreme.  (Should you score in the 49th percentile on some kind of “social” scale, your are labelled an introvert.  But if you hit the 51st percentile, suddenly you’ve become an extrovert.)  That’s silly.  Most of us fall into the middle of that bell shaped curve for most characteristics, so these measures mean less.  And, if you had an extra cup of coffee that morning, you might have been an extrovert while missing a few hours sleep could’ve turned you into an introvert.  This is all bunk.  Only those traits where you’re out there, different from 90% of the other college seniors, matter. 

    2.  Most career tests give specific job titles.  That’s hopeless.  The “financial analyst” who counts the daily salmon catches at the Anchorage docks had a far different job from the “financial analyst” who tracks long term currency trends in Manhattan.  There’s more to every job than the title.

      3.  No test tells you whether you’ll do better in a small group or large organization.  And this matters way more than location, title, industry and even salary, within reason.  Big and small groups are totally different environments.  Make sure you fit in the right place.

    4.  Hardly any of these tests give repeatable results.  The Meyers-Briggs test, given to millions of people every year, was shown to be non-repeatable in two different and independent analyses.  Yet it goes on and on, giving different answers every time.

     I don’t say the WAYA (Who Are You Anyway) test is perfect, but, we worked hard to solve these errors all other tests seem to make.