Talanta Test is a product of Dream Culture EA, an online passion to career evaluation platform that enables students and adults to align their passion to a matching career.
Founded in Kenya by Macmillan Wambua and Ansel Melly, Dream Culture East Africa aims to offer online career evaluation services on the web and was launched when the founders observed the problem that High School is the critical point at which students make their first career decision by choosing what subjects to study; yet with minimal or unreliable career guidance.
“We created the solution, an online career evaluation platform for career evaluation. Our solution enables students to make sound career decisions easier, faster and cheaper,” Macmillan told TechMoran.
The Talanta Test works simply. Users go to www.dreamculture.co.ke and click take test, then register and log in. They then select tjeir method of payment and pay KSH 99 ($1) either via mobile money, Visa, Mastercard or any form of online payments available. They take the test of 40 questions and click submit and lastly download their PDF report.
The evaluation process takes 10-15 minutes and has so far served 869 people. Talanta Test’s primary target is the Form 1 and 2 students who are yet to choose their senior high school subjects. However, the firm believes the over 2,000,000 students in High School every year in Kenya stand to benefit from their career evaluation service.
“High school leavers and aspiring college students who are undecided about their careers can also take the Talanta Test for guidance,” he said. “Interestingly, we have seen parents and guardians take it up upon themselves to evaluate their students to make informed career decisions. We have also observed heads of career guidance departments in secondary schools use our platform as a tool to guide their students.”
Though many students want to take the classes, Macmillan says the challenge of lack of access to Internet is huge and at times it administers the test in printed form, take the forms to its data entry team, enters the data to its system for analysis, prints the reports and takes the results back to the students. This takes them more time and resources and thus costs KSH 250 per student.
Locally, jobs and career platform Fuzu and My Career Identity offer this services too and they provide person to person counseling. Talanta Test is unique in that its service is standardized and fully automated.
“Our system does not get tired or like some students over others. We provide our service online. Therefore, our service is conveniently available to a user wherever they are, whenever they want and needless to say, we are at least 10 times cheaper,” added Macmillan.
Talanta Test evaluates students passion against all career fields taught in Kenyan colleges and universities and shows their passion’s match to their career fields by percentage.
After taking the Talanta Test, a user gets a Talanta Test Report instantly. The report shows clearly how their passion and interests match with different career fields thus enabling them to choose their most suitable career. Macmillan says the team is working to diversify Talanta Test with a new feature with which we will be able to test a student’s competence in subjects alongside their passion and interests.
Secondly, it’s also working to take its service to neighboring countries in East Africa and hopefully all of Africa. Thirdly, the team sees Talanta Test as just the beginning of Kenyan made computer aided personal decisions as it shall continue to develop online platforms that help individuals make hard decisions and navigate through life smoothly.
