Parents! Career Rocket^sm and YOU!

As parents ourselves, we know that what helps our children HELPS US! We want our children to be successful. The term "gainful employment" is one of those KEYS to success.

That's the WHY of Career Rocket^sm. The WHAT is that it helps you to negotiate the complexity of the options and steps that you will be guiding your child through as they mature from childhood to the adult workforce.

In one easy-to-use location, the Career Rocket^sm platform of services offers many different features and options, designed to complement and coordinate career and education planning, career aptitude exploration, career readiness inventories. Career Rocket^sm is a place to organize and prepare job readiness and college readiness documents, and a place to access many other resources and services. Think of it as a giant file cabinet, storage room, career fitness center, and a multi-media library with links and doorways to educational institutions, aptitude assessments, employers, and job opportunities.

Career Rocket^sm was created and is maintained by an established human resources software services company, HRMC, Inc. (Human Resource Management Center, Inc.). All personal information posted on Career Rocket^sm is secure and private. Career Rocket^sm is free to the student, your child. We are parents like you, and grandparents; we know that there are as many potential pathways to success as there are individuals. Our combined experience in human resources, career preparation, education, and software design has been pulled together for this project over 20 years or more. Our goal as parents, much like yours, has been to raise our children and guide our young adult children to become self-supporting adults working in a career suited to their strengths and interests.

Career Rocket^sm is offered free of charge to parents and students because business and industry is interested in the Career Rocket^sm platform to serve their purpose of screening and identifying potential employees. Leveraging this interest by industry, we have been able to service industry’s needs and provide a system at no charge to you and your student. Because industry is linked to our system, it affords those who chose to access it, job postings and searches, as well as potential employer contact information. Students can opt to safely, and only if you select to, research job openings that match your child’s interests, education, and career pathway aspirations.

Assuring Student Privacy

Each student’s record and all other activities are secure. Unauthorized viewing is prohibited by the system. Employers may review the portfolios of students who authorize such review, without personally identifiable information. Job application information and contact information is only submitted when authorized by the student.

Entering Today’s Workforce

"Employers don’t even see a copy of my transcript when I apply for jobs" is a common comment from students searching for part-time or full-time jobs for the first time.

Research reveals that at the end of four years of college, only 17% of students earn a degree. Seventy five percent of military service applicants aren’t even qualified to take the entrance exam; of those that do take the exam, 25% of them fail. And the military isn’t a hard grader – it only takes a score of 31out of a possible 99 to pass.

The national workforce environment is a rocky road: unemployment statistics, potential college loan debt, and the competition for employment opportunities which are increasingly requiring higher levels of skill and training, experience and competence. Networking and consistent effort in building an educational foundation and employment readiness are key components to obtaining the status of self-supporting, employed worker.

Career Rocket^sm provides a platform from which to build this status. Career Rocket^sm is a secure, structured electronic platform from which you gather documentation, explore potential, plan a pathway including courses and continuing education opportunities, connect to employers’ job openings, explore educational opportunities, and prepare to market your child’s accomplishments, interests, education, and aptitudes.

Career Rocket^sm Overview

Now the HOW! One of the major "pillars" of the Career Rocket^sm service is the ePortfolio. Similar to a resume, the ePortfolio provides a place for students to plan, document, and view their educational and career readiness progress. It provides purpose to their course selection, and encourages and celebrates achievement.

The ePortfolio presents and documents your student’s state of career preparation and helps to match their knowledge, skills, and interests to various career opportunities and/or continuing educational tracks.

Research has shown that goal setting promotes increased performance. The same holds true for those career seekers who have an identified career goal. Those with career goals are more inclined to perform well and achieve greater academic and career success, taking hold of their lives and their futures!

The ePortfolio can be individualized to include assessment scores and results, reference recommendations, educational information, paid and unpaid work and internship experiences, special skills, awards, and work samples.

Like building a house or building a financial portfolio, effort over time produces results. The Career Rocket^sm is a location to visit with your child on a weekly or monthly basis, twice a year at the start and end of the school year, or daily, depending on where they are in their career quest journey. So you know what they say about a journey … LET’S TAKE THE FIRST STEP!

Career Rocket^sm also provides for career exploration delivering streaming video and other multimedia content for students to conduct an integrated, valid assessment of their skills, interests, aptitudes, and academic preparation. Career Rocket^sm has an option that facilitates matching students to internships with local employers. Career bound students who are ready to start work, or work experiences, have the ability to view job openings in their own local communities. If the student chooses, the system can automatically interview and assess the applicants, through an enabling component that allows employers to list their open jobs, using pre-formatted automated interviews.