Frequently Asked Questions

Career Key’s platform helps people make better career and education decisions through a combination of science-based assessments and self-guided resource articles and activities. These include:

• Career Decision Profile: career decision readiness inventory
• Career Key Discovery: Holland-based personality and interest inventory
• Career Key Central: group action portal for advisors and counselors
• Career Key’s public website Career Advice Resources with downloads
• Video channels on Vimeo, YouTube
• Resources for Professionals knowledge base
• Support Portal for assistance requests

Each quarter, we send an email to Career Key Central users with product updates. If you are not receiving these, submit a help request through our Support Portal.

Sign up for our monthly eNewsletter. It contains a summary of new content, new partners, and links to research you can use.  See an example.

If you can’t find what you need in our knowledge base, you can fill out a support ticket. To file one, visit our Support page and click on the Help icon.

U.S. based Career Key employees monitor these ticket submissions and we answer them as quickly as possible.

Doing all 3 steps will take you 10-15 minutes.

1. Watch a short video. You can also check out videos on our Vimeo channel.
2. Read the “About…” articles (2-4 minutes each) for the assessment you are using: About Career Key Discovery, About Career Decision Profile
3. Read “Manage CKD Discoverers” or “Manage CDP Clients” depending on which product you’re using.  Because people of different ages and stages use Career Key, we call CKD end users “discoverers” and CDP end users “clients.”

1. Invite colleagues to activate a Career Key Central user account in My Organization> user management.
2. Publicize and/or invite your users to begin using taking an assessment

For more, visit Set Up My Organization

Managers and Counselors can occupy more than one role; here is a summary of each:

Owner/Customer Account manager: has full access to all account functions including creating and managing sponsored organizations, subscriptions, and billing. (Example: assistant director of admissions)

Organization Manager: has full access to a sponsored organization’s settings, plug ins, and discoverers’/clients’ information. No access to billing.

Counselor: has the same access as the Organization Manager, can view all discoverers/clients in groups and unassigned.

Group counselor: can only view discoverers/clients in groups to which they are assigned.

Technical contact: sets up your organization’s web page that hosts and displays CKD assessment. (example: web developer, web master) Cannot view any discoverers/clients.

Learn more about Account Hierarchy

1.  Go to the Gear icon at the top right of your Career Key Central page.
2. Select My Organization.
3. Click on the User Management tab and scroll down to Invite User. The user receives an email with an activation link, which does not expire.

We send the email invitation from [email protected]. If the user doesn’t get the email, ask them to look for it based on the sender.

A “plug in” is a web application that is hosted on your organization’s website on a web page. It’s similar to an embedded Google Map on a restaurant website, except it takes up the whole web page.

Career Key Discovery and Career Decision Profile use separate web application plug ins.

Your discoverers or clients visit their plug in page via an Internet browser to create or return to their Career Key account.

Step 1: Confirm available user quantity in your subscription

Go to the top right Gear icon> My Organization>  Organization Info tab and quantity available at the top right. Example:

If this is 0, then you’ve reached your subscription’s threshold for adding new end users. Contact your Account Manager to purchase another subscription.

Step 2: Check to make sure the plug in is active

Visit the plug in URL they are trying to access. If you don’t know, ask the person to send it to you. You can also find it in My Organization> Technical tab.

If the web page shows an error or does not load properly, submit a technical support ticket at our Support Portal.

If your organization is using Single Sign On (SSO) (i.e. your school requires students to be signed into your Student Information System in order to access Career Key), submit a technical support ticket at our Support Portal.

The web page loads properly and the Career Key plug in appears

If your organization is not using Single Sign On (SSO), and the user has signed in before, make sure they are using the exact same email address they used before. (First name and last name errors don’t matter). If they do not match, the person will not be allowed to sign up or sign in.

Security setting – Pre-approved discoverers/clients only

If they are a first-time user and your organization is using pre-approved, preloaded email address access only, then check to make sure the user’s email address in Career Key Central (using Let’s Connect) matches what the person is entering to access. If they do not match or the person is not added to Career Key Central, the person will not be allowed to sign up or sign in.

Solution: Go to Create and Manage Groups to add the person to the desired assessment. You will need to do this twice if using both CKD and CDP.

1. Make the CKD or CDP application plug in easy to find on your website.
2. Publicize the hosted Career Key app webpage to administrators, faculty, staff, and students or clients. Don’t know where it is? Visit top right Gear Icon> My Organization> Technical and copy the plug in URL. If there are multiple, double check with your Organization Manager on which one to use.
3. You can also upload a list of discoverers/clients and invite them using email in Let’s Connect. The plug in access URL will be in the email. To locate all the people who haven’t started, in the use the CKD progress filter “Not Yet Started” and the CDP progress Filter “Not Completed”.

Also see: Manage CKD Discoverers, Manage CDP Clients

1. Go to the main Dashboard > Discoverers and Progress or CDP Clients, and enter the person’s name in the Search Box to the lower right.
2. Click on the person’s name to see Detail with assessment results.

1. Go to the Discoverer and Progress or CDP Clients table.
2. Set the date filter. The default is 1 year from today’s date.
3. If you want to export a select group, adjust the filters to create that list and select all. If you do not select any groups, all data will be exported.
4. Click on the Bulk Action button at the bottom of the table and choose “Export selected” or “Export all” if you did not make any selections.
5. Watch your email inbox for a communication from Career Key with your download link.

Learn more at Manage CKD Discoverers, Manage CDP Clients

Two options:

1. From the person’s Detail page, click on Send Message button. Choose the type of email you want to send. You can edit any of our templates.
2. Go to Dashboard > Let’s Connect > Send Messages. Click on the Let’s Connect button at the top left. Select the type of email you want to send. Add the person’s name to the sender line and start typing. The person’s email will auto-fill the space.

Learn more at Manage CKD Discoverers, Manage CDP Clients

Your discoverer/client may not see a Let’s Connect email because it lands in their Spam folder or “Promotions” tab in Gmail. Ask them to search for emails sent by [email protected].

If they do not receive Let’s Connect emails due to a technical reason, 48 hours after sending you will see an error message in their CK Central Detail page (there is a delay because it takes time for delivery failure messages to get back to us).

This primarily happens because (1) the email address you’re using contains an error, or (2) the person’s host email server automatically rejects outsider emails. To address these,

1. Verify the person’s email address. To fix errors, delete the discoverer/client from Career Key Central and go to Create and Manage groups to add them again using the corrected email address.
2. If you share an organization’s email system with a discoverer/client, then copy and paste the Let’s Connect template into a composed email using your system and send.

Learn more at Manage CKD Discoverers, Manage CDP Clients

Contact Juliet Jones at [email protected].