Hmmm… I just search Monster for “NCRC” and also got 6 six hits, with a total of 4 employers. Also, they were all either in IL or MN. So I wonder if the certificate is a more regional thing (though still pretty weak as a regional thing), or if Monster itself is bigger in the midwest than elsewhere?
Out of 92,335 employers (not businesses, employers) in the state as of the latest figures in 2008. That represents 0.325% of Oregon employers. Sounds gimicky to me.
Oregon is doing a very big push for this, mostly because they got a grant to get us to cover the cost of taking the test (it isn’t free). I just took mine yesterday, also a Gold. Yes, this is real. How effective it will be is yet to be determined as it depends on how many businesses take part (the businesses also get graded by the company, not sure how that works, but it was mentioned yesteday).
Northwest natural Gas and Nabisco both require it for all new hire according to the Oregon employment department. I dont know if that applies to all positions (I doubt it) or only entry level (more likely).
Regardless, a permanent certification that you can take with you from state to state that shows your competency (or excellence) in basic areas is not a bad thing, and if you tell prospective employers about it, they get curious. More certifications (real ones) are never bad.
I heard about it when I was unemployed and taking advantage of my state’s programs to get the unemployed re-employed.
Back in 2007 when I was first laid off it seemed the entire system was designed around high school drop-outs, the young and inexperienced, and the like, people who needed a GED or childcare or something to get started working, with a few programs targeted specifically at former steel mill workers. They just didn’t seem to know what to do with the influx of former white collar workers, most with some sort of college degree and decades of work experience that suddenly no one wanted to hire.
By 2013 the state had adjusted and had several tracks for the unemployed, including one focused on the older worker with degree and experience that needed to change careers or restart a career. Which fit my situation nicely but they still had the GED training and yes, the NCRC. I don’t think it was so much so a job-hunter could present a certificate to an employer but rather so the unemployment office could reassure an employer that the person had been tested and had a certain level of literacy/numeracy/skills. Having it be a test was seen as more objective than a job counselor’s impression from one-on-one discussion.
I got a gold Virginia CRC, which is apparently equivalent as it is based on the same exams. The number of jobs that it has gotten me is exactly zero. I stopped bringing it up as no employer has ever made an offer after I told them about my leet career readiness skillz.
I also am interested if I can use my Gold certificate to “get my foot in the door” into a different and potentially rewarding career, and the answer seems to be yes, theoretically, but there are very few cases where employers are actually on board on this in any formal or semiformal way. All the hiring managers here seem to care about are degrees and years of experience. Don’t have 3-5 years of experience in Mopery Aggregation and Fizzbin Management? Don’t bother to apply, we don’t care about your underlying skills. We don’t train either, so go away.
Anyone know of any employers that use an NCRC as a, or the, basic qualifier? E.g. where you can walk in the door, show your NCRC score, and if it’s high enough, go through a cursory interview and background check (to make sure you aren’t a supervillan or antisocial lunatic, not to identify whether you’re the best candidate) and start training for your new job?
I’ve done numerous searches over the years for this, and while I’ve found dozens of media stories about it, and hundreds of web pages from city, county and state employment websites encouraging their clients to take the test, I haven’t yet found a single site from an actual employer that asks for one as part of a job application, or mentions it in any way as something they would have an interest in.
Damn, that’s a run-on sentence. I might fail the test if I took it today.
There isn’t any writing on the test. It is very heavy on reading comprehension. In essence, the NCRC tests a few things:
- Basic literacy.
- Ability to extract meaning from basic documents and follow directions. E.g. here is the company policy on tiddlywinks <three paragraphs of rules and exceptions to those rules>. On Monday, you show up for work and there are three blue tiddlywinks, four red ones, and six green ones. What do you do? A) File a Type 2 Report with your Supervisor. Do not touch the tiddlywinks until you have received an Authorized Work Order. B) Process the tiddlywinks through Grinder A. C) Process the red tiddlywinks through Grinder A and box and ship the other ones to the office in Memphis. D) Process the blue tiddlywinks through Grinder A and file an Out-Of-Spec or Unauthorized Tiddlywink Report with the Corporate Ethics Officer. E) Wash the tiddlywinks in warm water for five minutes and process them through Grinder B.
- Basic math (±*/).
- Combining these skills, e.g. by doing math word problems. So basically those things you did in sixth grade with a train leaving Memphis at 35 MPH at 12:30 PM approaching a train that left Decatur at 9 AM traveling at 55 MPH.
I’m doing the Code Oregon on-line computer training and they claim I need to take this test as part of the sign-up for the Worksource program. Like I already don’t have enough on my plate with job hunting and the other hoops the state has me jumping through to qualify for FS while I’m trying to find a job. I really want to have to figure out what I need to do for a test that nobody gives a rats ass about when I could be training for computer programs like excel & office-suite that I know I need.
The test is mostly reading comprehension, chart and instrument reading (e.g. reading the temperature off a thermometer), and math word problems. The critical thing is to read the question and examine any provided illustrations carefully. In essence, it’s proof that you not only have basic reading and math skills, but that you can use them to do basic workplace tasks, like read an incoming shipping manifest and compare it with the employer’s written instructions and figure out whether you should put the Widgets on Shelf 1 and the Ding-Dongs on Shelf 2 or whether you should put everything on Shelf 2 and then call your supervisor to report that you are out of shelving.
It’s actually a neat test in a way. It’s a shame that employers don’t seem to be hiring high scorers - it’s become more of a basic check to make sure you’re not a complete dummy before they send you to shoe-tying school and your government-funded Advanced Preparation for Pre-GED Training.
If you’re pretty smart and can follow directions, don’t sweat this one. Really. You’ll do fine. Just read the directions and don’t cut corners.
I believe they also throw in some multi-step problems, sometimes with unit conversions. They provide a calculator and the conversions you need to know - no real need to memorize if I recall correctly. You might get a problem that says, “You have 10 full five-gallon drums of Diesel fuel. You have a Diesel generator that can power your facility for an hour and a half on one liter of fuel. Do you have enough Diesel fuel to run the facility from 3 PM on March 3 until 7 AM on March 10?” The math isn’t hard, but it’s multi-step and geared toward the kinds of things that might need to be done on the job. If you fumble your metric and English units like NASA famously did on that Mars probe, no career readiness for you!
Oregon Worksource is still promoting this heavily, and I was considering spending the half-day to take the test until I read this depressing thread. What a nice cash cow for ACT, at taxpayers’ expense.
If any job-seeker anywhere has ever benefited from the testing, I’d love to hear about it. But Worksource can’t even give me a list of employers who are claimed to care about the test: on their job-seekers page, the link under “View the List of Employers in Oregon who Support the NCRC” returns a big 404. 
FWIW, here’s a bunch of sample test questions in all three categories: (Warning: PDF)
I took this test after finding out that it was necessary to get a job with the local school system (Greenville county school system in South Carolina). Either that or a degree. I was recently accepted for a bus aide position.
If anyone’s curious, I got a Silver certificate (I scored a 4 in locating for information and a 6 in the math and reading ones).
It sure seems to be a bunch of stuff that really should be trivial for a high school graduate to score highly on, never mind a college graduate. Stuff like reading comprehension, basic math dealing with measurements, etc… Hell, even the MCAT math is high school level algebra in large part; I can’t imagine this test is anything other than proving you can work with fractions and decimals as used in measurement and money-related problems.
The test seems to be more of a baseline measurement for “Not an Idiot”, more than anything else. I mean, even if you get a Platinum score, it doesn’t indicate that you’re actually qualified to DO anything, but that you’re not a total waste of air who can’t do stuff that they should have not graduated you from high school for.
I don’t think that applying it to college graduates would really accomplish much- it’s not really aimed at them in the first place; the presence of a degree is de-facto career readiness proof.
I recognize this board is a few years old, but wanted to share some info in case anyone is basing their research on the earlier posts.
The National Career Readiness Certificate is a great tool for employers and job seekers. There are three sections - Applied Math, Reading for Information, and Locating Information. Math and reading go to level 7; Locating info goes to Level 6. Each level gets progressively more difficult and complicated. For example, in Locating information, the lower levels will focus on reading a chart or map and answering a question about it. The higher levels will take multiple graphs or gauges with a complex situation and ask for the student to assess the information and task at hand.
So many people have gone through an educational system that “teaches for the test,” and these same people have NO critical thinking skills. These tests incorporate testing the ability to make decisions, infer meanings, and problem solve.
Many employers are now requiring these tests across the nation. If they don’t use the CRC, they often have other types of tests that the CRC can help an applicant prepare for.
It looks good on a resume’ and shows the applicant has made an effort to go through the process.
Many community colleges (like the one I work for) offer classes for free and will cover the cost of the test. In our school, we provide a “class” where students find they are more disciplined by coming in to do the work, even though it is self-paced. We can then offer support and instruction when they are having difficulty in certain areas.
This is ideal for people who have been out of the job market a while and are now trying to find work. It helps brush up dormant skills and is a good boost to a deflated ego.
It’s not a gimmick or snake oil - it’s real, it’s increasingly needed, and well worth your time to explore.
7 years and hundreds of applications and interviews after posting this thread, I have yet to find one single employer who demanded it or even made reference to it. I find it hard to imagine that the previous poster signed up here just to respond to it.
And, IrisinNC, who are these “many employers across the country?” Where is a list?
10,000 companies accept it according to official website…but they don’t seem to provide a list. Neither do any of the other websites I’ve found so far that claim anything from 1,000 to 15,000 companies.
This thread has risen from the dead TEN time now by my count! Is that some kind of re-zombification record here?
Well, I started a thread about “Groundhog Day” that came back several times, but I don’t think ten times.
New account. One post. That sounds like a PR sound bite.
Can anyone say, “shill”?