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Kirnova Calling
How we work these out.
Kirnova Calling asks what you would enjoy doing, and then names work that involves activities like it. This page explains exactly how — including the parts where we decline to answer, which are the parts most worth reading.
- 6
- Interest themes, from Holland's RIASEC model
- 923
- Occupations with a published interest profile
- 3
- Forms, from a short one to a long one
- 0
- Scores shown to you, on purpose
What it asks
Activities, not adjectives
Every question names a piece of work — Build kitchen cabinets, Study ways to reduce water pollution — and asks one thing: would you like doing it? Not whether you are good at it, not whether you have the training, not what it pays. Concrete activities are answered more accurately than abstract statements about yourself, and they translate between languages and cultures far better.
The questions are not ours. They are the O*NET Interest Profiler, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, and we administer them word for word. We hold 182 item records in total, which is the 180-item long form plus two items the Department itself later reworded — we keep both wordings so each form stays exactly as its own source published it.
| Form | Questions | Per theme | Answer scale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kirnova Calling Saga | 180 | 30 | 3-point |
| Kirnova Calling | 60 | 10 | 5-point |
| Kirnova Calling Core | 30 | 5 | 5-point |
Each form is a complete published O*NET instrument, on the answer scale O*NET uses for that form. A longer form does not ask better questions — it asks more of them, which means we can tell smaller differences apart. That is the only thing depth buys.
Hands-on work
Work with tools, machines, materials, plants or animals — building, repairing, operating equipment, and being physically active or outdoors.
Investigating
Work that studies how things happen — researching, experimenting, diagnosing, and solving problems by finding out.
Creating (interest)
Work that makes something expressive — writing, performing, designing, composing — where there are few fixed rules and imagination pays.
Helping and teaching
Work that serves people directly — teaching, caring, advising, treating and supporting others.
Leading and persuading
Work that starts things and moves people — selling, negotiating, managing, and taking business decisions.
Organising information
Work with data, records and clear procedures — keeping things accurate, ordered and to a set standard.
Putting them in order
Why some themes are named together
We add up your answers within each of the six themes and put the themes in order. Then we do the part most tools skip: we check whether each step in that order is bigger than the wobble in our own measurement. Where it is not, we name those themes together rather than pretending one beats the other.
The bar is set so that a person whose interests are genuinely even is told they have an order no more than about one time in twenty. We chose that by simulating hundreds of thousands of even respondents and measuring how often the rule fired, rather than picking a threshold that looked reasonable. It cost us some power to detect real differences, and we would rather pay that than tell twenty people a story when nineteen of them have one.
If everything comes out level
You get one group of 6 and we say so plainly. That is a real result, not a failure. Plenty of people are drawn about equally to several kinds of work, and for them the useful question is which one to try first — not which one wins.
Why we never show you a score
A number invites comparison — with a friend, with a threshold, with last year. The honest content of this assessment is an order and a set of roles, and a number would imply a precision the answers do not carry. So there is no score, no percentage and no percentile anywhere in your result.
Matching work
How we choose the roles
The U.S. Department of Labor publishes an interest profile for every occupation in its database — 6 numbers per job, saying how much that work involves each kind of activity. We compare the shape of your six answers against the shape of each occupation's six, across all 923 of them, and show the ones that look most like yours.
Shape, not size
We compare the pattern and ignore overall enthusiasm. Somebody who likes everything a little and somebody who likes everything a lot get the same matches if their pattern is the same — which is right, because how freely a person says yes is not a fact about what suits them.
No three-letter code
Career tools often reduce you to a three-letter code. We never build one. A code forces a strict first-second-third order, and when two of your themes are genuinely level, that order would be invented. Comparing whole profiles needs no tie broken, so we do it that way instead.
Roles come in groups too
Run the same person's answers with a little noise and the exact top ten reshuffles constantly, even though the neighbourhood stays put. So we show a group of roles that fit about equally well, and never a numbered list pretending the fourth is beaten by the third.
If your answers have no shape
If you answered every kind of activity the same way, there is no pattern to match work against, and we say so instead of listing roles. A list built from nothing would look exactly as confident as a real one — which is precisely why we do not produce it.
Occupation data comes from the O*NET Database, release O*NET 30.3. Your saved result keeps the roles we showed you at the time, so a later database release never silently rewrites what you were told.
What it cannot tell you
The honest limits
These are not small print. They are the boundary of what the assessment is entitled to say, and they are the same in your report as they are here.
It does not measure ability
Liking an activity and being good at it are different things, and this asks only about the first. Nothing here says you would do the work well.
It is not a hiring tool
Kirnova Calling is not used to decide whether anybody gets a job, and it must not be. Interests are for exploring what you want, not for filtering who gets chosen — that is our rule, and it is also the purpose the O*NET tools are licensed for.
It describes now, not always
Interests move, especially in your twenties. This is a starting point for looking, not a verdict on who you will become. Sitting it again in a year or two is sensible.
A named role is an invitation to go and look
Seeing an occupation here means its published profile resembles yours. It does not mean the job is available, pays well, suits your circumstances, or would make you happy. The most useful next step is to talk to somebody who already does it.
Modifications and disclaimers
What we changed, and what that means
Kirnova Calling uses the O*NET Career Exploration Tools under licence. That licence requires us to tell you exactly what we changed, and to carry the notices below. We would want to tell you anyway; here it is also an obligation.
The nature of our modifications
What we changed: we present the questions in a randomised order, we add two check questions that are not scored, and we deliver the assessment online. The questions themselves are unchanged from the published O*NET forms, and each form uses the response scale O*NET uses for it.
In more detail: we present the questions in a randomised order rather than the published order; we insert two check questions that are not part of the instrument and are never scored; and we deliver the assessment through a website rather than on paper. We do not reword, shorten, replace or add to the questions themselves, and each form is administered on the response scale O*NET publishes for it. Two items in our records carry an older wording alongside the current one, because the Department of Labor itself revised them after publication; each form uses the wording its own source published.
Required notices
This assessment includes information from the O*NET Career Exploration Tools by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the O*NET Tools Developer License. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. Kirnova has modified all or some of this information. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.
Kirnova has modified all of, a portion of, or the purpose of the O*NET® Career Exploration Tools. The U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA) has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. As such, USDOL/ETA will not be liable to any third party or end-user for any damages arising out of or from the use or misuse of the modified O*NET Career Exploration Tools or any products incorporating or containing the modified O*NET Career Exploration Tools.
The O*NET material is provided by USDOL/ETA as-is, with no warranty of any kind — including no warranty of accuracy or of fitness for a particular purpose. See Section 5 of the O*NET Tools Developer License.