Want fulfilling work? Find your passion.

By Scott Abbott 

I’m a morning person.

It’s really easy to get out of bed when your day has a purpose. When the work you’re doing actually means something and has the potential to change lives. Yes, we all need to make money. But when you’re fulfilling your passion, when you’re pursuing your dreams, you want to do more than punch the clock. You want to do something great.

I’ve always had this passion — this motivation — to help people build themselves up. I’ve written books, worked with nonprofits and spent a lifetime encouraging the young and old to discover their potential.

Fortunately, I’ve found a business partner, Adrian Jagow, who holds these same views. Adrian is very involved in ministries dedicated to helping underresourced individuals and families, giving them the tools to figure out how to best care for themselves and those around them.

We both really enjoy helping people, and when we realized that we could build a company together that did the good we wanted to see in this world, Talevation was born.

Know thyself

Our goal is to help individuals develop themselves into the people they want to be. The people they were meant to be. But that level of success and development doesn’t happen by accident.

We believe that one of the core tenants of self-improvement is knowing where you are today. If you don’t have a clear understanding of who you are, how you think, how you’re motivated and what you can currently do, it’s hard to take that next step.

Unfortunately, testing has traditionally had a negative connotation. People often think, “You’re testing me because you don’t trust me.”

We want to flip that misconception on its head. We think people should test and assess because they care. Let’s work together to identify what you do well and to help you more confidently know what you should do to pursue personal and professional growth. Use that testing data to generate the knowledge to give you the wisdom to know what you should do.

That’s what we want to do with our Talent Assessments Platform (TAP).

Built with our proprietary code alongside IBM® Watson® Talent and IBM Watson Assistant technology, TAP lets users securely access a number of self-assessment tools associated with over 1,400 job titles and over 28,000 skill criteria. With these tools, users can identify where they stand in a chosen field and if they need to improve on a particular skill or ability. And armed with this knowledge, they can more easily create a plan to develop themselves and become who they want to be.

And rather than restrict this tool to only businesses with an enterprise license, we also let individuals purchase off-the-shelf assessments for less than a good meal.

Look to the future

Beyond those currently employed, we also want to help the next generation find their way. If you do a quick search for career development topics, you’ll find many of them are targeted at Millennials and Baby Boomers — the two largest generations in the workforce. But what we’re failing to realize is that Millennials aren’t the youngest people in the job market anymore.

Generation Z is in the process of finishing their educations and starting their careers, and we need to make sure they’re not overlooked.

We’ve recently launched our new TAP U! service, which works with schools and universities to help students and recent graduates build a growth plan based on proven, scientifically-defensible, sociologically-validated criteria.

We think it’s pretty cool that the same courses that large enterprises and government offices are using to identify, attract, develop and support great talent are also now available to high schoolers. Because if we can help them find their passion, they’ll be better prepared to build a fulfilling career and ultimately provide for their families.

Don’t travel alone

I’m a big believer in partnerships. You do what you do best. We’ll do what we do best. And TAP definitely reflects that philosophy.

For TAP, we didn’t have to do the heavy lifting. We didn’t have to build the database. We didn’t have to build the AI. Instead, we were able to complement that technology with our part — the experience, the coaching and the counseling that we can offer to our clients.

Currently, we have over 4,500 corporate enterprise clients. We do 150,000 – 175,000 assessments every month. We could not do this without IBM’s help. As an IBM Business Partner, we’ve had greater access to the technology we need. And with an IBM Embedded Solutions Agreement (ESA) in place, we can seamlessly merge what we do with what IBM does, providing our users with the tools that can help them be their best.

At Talevation, we like to think big. We’re missional. We’re purpose driven. And we know that for any of us to grow, we need help. We need the knowledge, insight and sometimes strength of others to transform what is into what could be.

By working together, we can more easily fulfill our passions and do something great.