IDAK College and Seminary Resources

Online Talent Discovery Guide

Everyone has natural inherent talents and abilities. The IDAK Online Talent Discovery Guide is perhaps the most effective resource available to identify and evaluate your natural talents and match them to the ideal job positions. This service is a based upon the talent assessment approach described in IDAK founder, John Bradley’s ground-breaking book, Discovering Your Natural Talents.

The IDAK Online Talent Discovery Guide™ leads you through the highlights of your life to evaluate your most consistent patterns of natural talent behavior. This is a four-step self-assessment exercise which is valuable for personal awareness and as a tool for future career and volunteer service decisions. Plan to spend about 90 minutes performing this assessment.  (It can be completed in multiple sessions.)

Switching Tracks

By John Bradley with Dave & Neta Jackson

For more than 25 years, John Bradley has excelled in helping people discover and engage in their career “sweet spot.”  This latest release, “Switching Tracks” is designed specifically for those who are still on that journey.

Building on his experience as a career counselor, the author suggests that people go through five phases in their careers. Using case histories that are composites from his clients, Bradley illustrates and describes the stages of passionate pursuits (ages 20 to 30), reevaluation (early 30s), confirmation (ages 35 to 45), accelerated performance or devastation (ages 45 to 55), and heightened performance or bitterness (mid-50s and beyond). Three appendices add practical helps for people as they move through these phases.

John and his IDAK team of professionals have helped literally thousands of adults, particularly those seeking a mid-career shift, make the second half of their working life deeply satisfying and fulfilling. Whether you’re just beginning your career journey or are a mid-career adult considering switching tracks, this self-help volume can be a valuable guide.

IDAK Career Match™ Self-Administered Kit

Watch the Video

Your ideal career possibilities revealed. The IDAK Career Match is a computer scored assessment tool which evaluates your career interests and values along with your natural talents. The assessment results then are matched to over 90,000 career options including ministry service, business, industry, government agencies, military departments, education and nonprofit organizations. It even includes an Employer Search Guide to help connect you with career and employment opportunities in cities of your choice.

You receive two detailed printout spreadsheet reports along with an Employer Search Guide to help you locate organizations in your city which match the report results. (It takes approximately 6-8 hours for completion. Allow time to mail in answer booklet for computer scoring).

The printout reports list your aptitude results and list your top 10 recommended career matches. Your interpretation of your spread sheet reports is enhanced by an audio CD step-by-step guide to help you with the interpretation of your results. This tool does not include any counseling or advisement of your results by a counselor. This self service process is very valuable to help discover your full range of career possibilities, particularly at midlife and beyond. It is not recommended for individuals who are attempting to resolve a current job problem (such as stress, boredom or lack of advancement). It is also not recommended for unemployed individuals seeking a new direction for their job search. This self service can be upgraded to either Full Service Options: Mid-Career Advancement Assessment or IDAK Complete Job Search.

Ministry Web Directory

For colleges and seminaries wanting to improve their student placement and to assist alumni with their job search, IDAK recommends the Ministry Web Directory. This new Web software service provides for a campus its own protected database of church and ministry organization listings which can be accessed by students and alumni on line. To inquire, contact the IDAK GROUP.  For a live sample go to www.ministrywebdirectory.com.

IDAK College Course

IDAK provides a range of college course instruction and materials. This range of instructional assistance begins with two class sessions and can expand to a full quarter or semester 2 credit hour course. IDAK can supply a certified instructor as well as train your campus faculty or staff person and license to your campus to use the student notebook materials. IDAK also has training and materials for instructors who teach distance learning courses.

IDAK Career Match Assessment System

Your interests, values and natural talents matched to over 90,000 career options.

The IDAK Career Match Assessment System is IDAK’s premier assessment and career matching instrument. It has been recognized as the industry’s most comprehensive and in-depth system. Career Match evaluates aptitudes in three distinct areas; interests, values and natural talents. Most other systems evaluate on only one or two of these aptitude categories. These aptitudes are then cross-matched against more than 90,000 career options. The top ten matches are featured, including organization descriptions as well as recommended job titles within those organizations. The results are pre-coded to facilitate a link to an exhaustive list of compatible names of companies and organizations in your city. This data is updated on a weekly basis.

IDAK Career Match Samples

The IDAK Career Match instrument includes the following: An Exercise booklet and answer booklet, an Aptitude Summary Report, a Career Match Report and an Employer Search Guide booklet for matching the results to names of companies and organizations in your city. Click below to view samples.

Download the IDAK Career Match Samples (PDF, 17.3 MB)

• Exercise/Answer Booklets: The Natural Talent assessment included with this system identifies a person’s innate natural talents which are different from learned work skills or educational knowledge. These are your most powerful career advancement aptitudes.
• Aptitude Summary Report: This extensive report provides individualized graphs for 54 natural talent evaluations and a prioritized list of values and work priorities. These are then used to identify the 10 best career options and job positions or duties.
  • Samples:
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
• Career Match Report: This report features your ten best career matches from over 90,000 possibilities. It identifies companies and organizations which are numerically coded to match employer directories in cities of your choosing. This report also provides up to five job titles for each organization.
  • Samples:
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
• Employer Search Guide: This is a reference directory designed to help you locate employer’s names, addresses and contact information in your city which correspond to your Career Match Reports. This directory also includes a guide to conduct research surveys of occupations you wish to pursue in depth.

IDAK Mid-Career Advancement Seminar

The IDAK Mid-Career Advancement Seminar is designed for college and university alumni and association members who are seeking to re-evaluate their career future in order to discover their ideal niche. This seminar offers six hours of extensive training in addition to completing a combination of IDAK Career Match and Natural Talents assessment exercises. These exercises are then evaluated and returned to seminar participants along with a detailed interpretation of their results. The seminar training provides instruction on how to effectively utilize their Career Match results.

This seminar has been featured in colleges, universities, government agencies and fortune 500 corporations throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Level I/II Training Seminar

An Introduction to the IDAK Career Match System. The IDAK Career Match System has been recognized as the industry’s most comprehensive and accurate career matching resource. Participants are instructed in the design, theory and application of the IDAK Career Match instrument, including in-depth training in the use of IDAK’s Natural Talent assessment resources.

Applications for your practice. Participants are provided with models of how to utilize the Career Match for use with individuals or with a group seminar setting.  Additionally, the training includes recommendations on how to bill for services.  Typical “packages” for individuals range from one to three billable hours, seminar “packages” range from four to eight billable hours.

Participants are introduced to applications IDAK currently has developed for use with colleges and universities, corporations, outplacement services, career guidance services and ministry service organizations.

Level III Training Seminar

Autobiographical Interview Training. This is an advanced level of training for the serious career management counselor/consultant who wants to develop his/her own interview assessment in addition to using the IDAK Career Match process. Participants learn how to assess Natural Talents by an autobiographical interview process.

• The Level III Seminar provides participants with five levels of training. These include:
• The theory of autobiographical interview
• Video role playing
• Personal assessment of each seminar participant to provide guidance in their professional practice
• Live role play for each participant
• Closed-circuit live video of participant role plays for enhanced individualized training

Applications for your practice. Participants are given models for structuring billable time: one for career counseling and the other for corporate consulting. Billable time ranges from three to seven hours. All applications of this assessment process are one-on-one services.

Level IV Training Seminar

Counselors, educators and coaches who wish to provide job search and resume preparation services, can purchase training, client notebook, and audio CDs for their client or classroom sessions. From its practical daily client coaching, IDAK has developed a 10 week (and longer if needed) packaged service with the curriculum to give a client/student the tools needed to research their best Career Match options, narrow the best to one, develop an employer contact list in their city, prepare a resume, prepare for interviews, search for hidden jobs, best use websites, social media for networking, how to compete for advertised vacancies, and finally, receive and negotiate a job offer. Over twelve hours of CD audio instruction supplement the notebook materials. The audio CDs are professionally recorded and produced so that they are ready to be distributed to one’s clients or students.The audio instructors include  seven professionals:  a psychologist, head hunter, Human Resource Director, three IDAK counselors, and a moderator. Training includes one complete notebook, CD album and two days of IDAK instruction. The training also includes a license agreement to purchase and use additional notebooks and CDs with clients or students.