The Client
The Guidance Center, in New Rochelle, NY, is a state-funded, not-for-profit center that offers counseling, resources, job placement and advice to approximately 300 people each year, most of whom are in recovery from drug or alcohol dependency. The center is designed to give people the tools to make a successful and sober transition back into life.
The Solution
Wonderlic Basic Skills Test (WBST): This forty-minute, timed test measures basic math and verbal skills of Guidance Center clients, helping the organization decide on the critical first steps toward a more successful life for their clients, including whether they need to bolster their education and by how much; whether they can progress directly to college or if they should take refresher courses first; or if they’re ready to proceed into their careers or jobs of choice.
Wonderlic Basic Skills Test content and results are directly tied to the Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network (O*NET) and Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT). The DOT contains minimum required skill levels for more than 12,000 positions.
The WBST has also been approved by the U.S. Department of Education.
The WBST Helps Guidance Center Clients Make Successful Transitions
People who have undergone treatment for drug or alcohol dependency and are re-emerging into the world—and the workplace—walk a tightrope toward continued sobriety. From that precarious position it’s all too easy to slip and fall into destructive, but familiar, habits and old ways.
The Guidance Center in New Rochelle, New York, is a not-for-profit state-funded safety net for people coming out of drug and alcohol treatment. The center offers counseling, resources, job placement and advice to residents of New York’s Westchester County. It is designed to help people make a successful and sober transition back into life outside of a treatment center.That isn’t an easy process because the help, guidance, and resources people need to succeed at that fragile point in their lives are as individual as the people themselves. Alcohol and chemical addiction doesn’t discriminate on the basis of economic status, education, race or gender, so clients at the Guidance Center run the gamut. One might be a college graduate with many years of work experience; another might not have finished high school. The kinds of job placement services offered vary just as widely, depending on what type of job or career the client is seeking; whether he needs a fresh start in a completely different field, or she wishes to re-enter the career she had before the addiction took it all away. Often, the clients themselves don’t know where to place those first critical steps. The challenge for counselors is to know in which direction to point their clients for the best chances of success.
One critical tool the Guidance Center uses is the Wonderlic Basic Skills Test (WBST), says Project Coordinator Laura Siegel. “We assist people seeking to return to the workforce by helping them take a look at where they are academically,” she says. “Where are they starting from? Should they go back to college? Do they need to get their GED? Do they need some refresher courses before they take that step? What about continuing education? The WBST helps us determine where people should start.”
Siegel administers the WBST to all Guidance Center clients—some 300 per year —as a first step on the road back to successful living. The test evaluates the basic math and English skills that the client has mastered, giving counselors a baseline measure of their fundamental job skills. The test serves as a tool for preventing poor decisions by helping to ensure that clients are not going to fail on their first action out in the world. In a sense, the WBST score is a building block for a successful future.
“It’s critical for us to know exactly where individuals are in terms of math and English skills because we don’t want to set any of our clients up to fail,” says Siegel. “If we recommend they take some college courses or get their GED but they don’t have the basic skills to learn the material, we’ve set them up for failure.” And failure in the life of a newly recovering addict can be a compelling invitation back to old habits and ways.
The test also tells counselors whether their clients are able to proceed directly into the workplace, and it helps them steer clients into careers where they can maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. “It depends on what they’d ultimately like to do with their lives,” Siegel says. “If I’ve got a client who wants to become a carpenter, he needs to have at least an eighth grade level of math skills. If he’s got that, but is low on English skills, he’s still good to go. For him, English isn’t going to be as critical.”
Just the act of taking the test can be a confidence booster for clients, Siegel reports. They know it’s a positive step toward creating the life they want and that sets everyone on a path toward success.
