The Youth Volunteer Corps, a partner of the DeBruce Foundation, recently organized a workshop in which students took the Agile Work Profiler. Below is an excerpt of Neil-Erine’s reflection on the experience and his newfound Agilities.

By Neil-Erine, 11th grade student in Alberta, Canada

During our monthly IYAB (International Youth Advisory Board) meeting in October, members had a workshop where we all took the Debruce Foundation’s Agile Work Profiler test. This contest was intended to help members realize their current skills and become more aware of how they interact in the world. After getting our results, we were able to meet to discuss our future career goals and our current efforts.

To help people understand the skills they possess, the DeBruce Foundation has created the Agile Work Profiler. It is important to understand what skills you have and what skills you still need to develop when you enter any workforce, apply to college, and simply excel yourself.

The ten possible results of the contest are: Manage, Develop others, Innovate, Inspect, Judge and Estimate, Operate objects, Organize, Sell and Communicate, Serve and Care, and Work with Information. After taking the Agile Job Profiler questionnaire, I was presented with my top three of those ten skills. Here are my results, the first being my most developed skill.

Managing
Developing Others
Innovating

For me, this made sense because I have four years of experience working and volunteering at summer camps helping young people develop their skills. I managed games, activities, exercises and was in charge of the welfare of about 10 full-time campers during the summer. It makes sense why the management and development of others were my two main Agilities, as I was in charge of many individuals in a high energy situation. Innovating also made sense because what would work one week with one group of campers would not necessarily work with another group with different personalities or age ranges. I would have to adjust and adapt the games and exercises to fit the dynamics of each group.

The main conclusions of this questionnaire were discussed during our virtual IYAB meeting on zoom. Many of the other IYAB members talked about how their results finalized their decision to enter STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) or how it made them think about what to specialize in during post-secondary education. Members who wanted to enter STEM usually had as their best results Working with Information, Inspecting, Innovating, or Judging and Estimating.

The main conclusion I drew from this experience was that the results of the Agile Work Profiler were not set in stone. They were only meant to give you the opportunity to see where you are now and potentially guide you on a path to where you need to go. I am a lifelong learner. I could take a class on communication or organizational skills. If a skill that is important to me and that I value was not one of my best results, that does not mean that I cannot begin to focus on developing that skill. It just gives me more initiative to work on that skill and the many others that were not my strong suit.

Questionnaires like these are beneficial for those who question what they want to achieve in their lives and where they would like to go. Here are the links if you want to do the questionnaire yourself and check out the research behind it.