Career exploration for every middle-school student. Age-appropriate, COPPA-compliant, from $199/mo for 200 assessments a month.

Research from the OECD's Career Readiness work and the National Career Development Association shows that grade 6-8 career exposure correlates with stronger high-school engagement and reduced grade-9 transition disruption. The goal at this age is not committing to a career — it is widening the visible career landscape, validating that students' natural strengths map to real careers, and building career-related vocabulary that supports later decision-making. Schools that defer career exploration until grade 11-12 see students arriving at pathway-commitment conversations with limited career awareness; earlier exposure removes that gap.

Three layers. (1) Question phrasing is calibrated to grade 6-8 reading level (typical Lexile 800-1050) — assessments use concrete observable behaviours rather than abstract self-concepts. (2) Career Guide output uses family-friendly language (no salary triggers for under-13 conversations unless schools enable them, no career-pressure framing, age-appropriate career descriptions). (3) The recommended battery for grades 6-8 prioritises strengths exploration (Multiple Intelligences) and lighter-touch interest discovery (RIASEC short-form) over deep trait assessment (Big Five OCEAN, which is better calibrated for grade 9+).

Yes. Under-13 access uses a parental-consent flow before assessment data is collected — schools either gather signed parental consent forms once per cohort (most common pattern) or use the in-platform parental-consent flow per student. Anonymous-cohort enrollment is also available, where students complete assessments under a school-issued ID with no name or PII, removing COPPA scope entirely. We sign a Data Processing Agreement covering exactly which fields are collected for under-13 students and our data-retention posture aligns with school-record requirements.

Eighth-grade students entering high school often lack the self-awareness vocabulary needed to engage with high-school course-selection conversations meaningfully. JobCannon's grade 8 Career Guide output gives students concrete language for "I am the kind of person who likes X, has strengths in Y, and might explore careers like Z," which parents and high-school counsellors can build on during transition meetings. Schools using JobCannon at grade 8 report stronger student engagement in 9th-grade course-selection conversations compared to cohorts arriving without prior assessment exposure.

It is built to slot into existing programming rather than to need a new "career class." The placements schools use most often are 6th-grade homeroom or advisory period for an introductory Multiple Intelligences exploration, 7th-grade ELA cross-curricular for vocabulary-building around careers, and 8th-grade transition unit for the full battery and Career Guide output. Schools running a dedicated career-readiness curriculum (some states mandate this for middle schools) can use JobCannon as the assessment spine. Six 45-minute lesson plans — two each for grades 6, 7 and 8, cited against the Arizona Department of Education eCTE standards for that grade band — sit in the coordinator resources area and can be run as written. They are material a teacher opens on the day, not an implementation service: what the classroom has to supply is listed plan by plan rather than assumed.

JobCannon ships a parent-friendly Career Guide view that is shareable via a per-student link the student controls. The view emphasises strengths exploration over career commitment ("here are the kinds of work that fit your strengths" rather than "here is the career you should pursue"). For schools running parent-evening events around career exploration, the parent-friendly Career Guide functions as a discussion artefact. What we do not ship is a parent-evening script or a parent-communication template — schools write those in their own voice, and describing ours would be inventing a deliverable.

The CASEL SEL framework defines five core competencies — self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. JobCannon's middle-school battery directly supports the first (self-awareness) through Multiple Intelligences and Temperament, and supports responsible decision-making through Values and Skills Audit reflection. Schools using a state SEL standard (Illinois SEL Standards, Pennsylvania SEL Competencies, NY SEL Benchmarks) typically align JobCannon assessments to specific competency indicators in their lesson plans. We do not publish a CASEL crosswalk of our own — the six lesson plans we do publish cite the Arizona eCTE standards, and the SEL mapping stays the school's.

This is a real concern at this age and shapes our design decisions. Three guardrails. (1) Career Guide output for grades 6-8 is framed as "kinds of work that fit your strengths" rather than "the career you should pursue" — students see clusters of options, not single answers. (2) Salary triggers are off by default for under-13 conversations, removing financial-pressure framing from the early career-exploration phase. (3) The recommended battery prioritises Multiple Intelligences (strengths discovery) over Big Five (OCEAN) trait assessment, because trait stability is meaningfully lower at age 11-14 than at 15+. The platform is explicitly designed to widen the visible career landscape, not to narrow it.

Several US states mandate career exploration during middle-school grades — Indiana (Graduation Pathways requirements), South Carolina (Education and Economic Development Act, the IGP), Tennessee (College and Career Plan starting grade 6), Wisconsin (Academic and Career Plan), and others. JobCannon Career Guide output produces participant-level evidence schools record in the state-mandated career-readiness portfolio (variously called IGP, ACP, or career plan). The platform does not replace your state SIS — we feed assessment and Career Guide data into the school's career-plan record. Districts running multi-school deployments use the cross-school dashboard for state career-plan completion-rate reporting.