Benchmarks are the backbone of the Guided Compass platform. Basically, a benchmark defines the ideal candidate profile for a pathway or opportunity. As a career-seeker, benchmarks allow you to develop clear roadmaps to bridget the gap between your profile and the “benchmark” candidate. For example, if you want to become a software developer at Riot Games, a benchmark may allow you to clearly see that you need to be skilled in HTML, CSS, Javascript, and C++ and that it helps to have a passion for video game development.

The initial use case for benchmarks was to help the LA Area Chamber of Commerce match thousands of community college and high school students to a wide variety of local tech internships with limited staff. The challenge was how do we match people at scale who have little to no experience? Today, Guided Compass has default benchmarks for most career pathways and many employers. Workforce, educational programs, and employers can use Guided Compass to create their own custom ideal candidates at the pathway and opportunity levels. When an employer or organization posts an opportunity (e.g., internship) to an organization, a copy of the pathway-level benchmark is made for the specific opportunity so that it can be tweaked for that opportunity.

Learn more about benchmarks in Our Benchmarks Explained Video. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like to create a benchmark:

Career-seekers build their profile to match against benchmarks, whether they are general or program-specific. Here’s an example of the matched profile card of a UX Design candidate for example:

In fact, in addition to work opportunities, benchmarks can be used to recommend the following to career-seekers:

• Program-specific career pathways
• Competency-based courses
• Career events (e.g., job shadows, workshops)
• Projects
• Employers

As a career-seeker, you can also view all of your top matches at once, by clicking “My Top Matches” in the dropdown under your profile:

As a career-seeker, while exploring opportunities, career paths, peers, mentors, etc... , you can calculate your matches by clicking the “Match Icon” on the top-left of the screen. Below a screenshot of the top opportunity matches, for example:

Ultimately, the goal of benchmarks is to allow career-seekers and the people that help them to have a common language and goal post. A candidate can prepare their profile over years of schooling and projects, and then import their profile to apply to opportunities. Intermediary training organizations can view scored candidates, add internally-conducted interview scores, and refer candidates to work opportunities. Employers can review candidates, provide feedback, and hire candidates all in one system. Guided Compass even has timesheet functionality to capture weekly feedback once hired. Feedback collected from all parties informs everyone of their performance, further clarifies the benchmarks, and strengthens the Guided Compass recommendation algorithm.

Career-seekers benefit from the continuously improved default benchmarks by joining for free here. Organizations may create custom benchmarks for pathways after purchasing more than 100 career-seeker licenses. Click here for pricing information.