Christian Financial Concepts, the organization Larry founded in 1976, assembled a highly qualified team to develop a biblically-based yet psychometrically-sound career assessment. The team, initially known as Career Pathways, investigated other assessment tools on the market and found that virtually none of them reflected a biblical worldview. They also found that most were not comprehensive covering only one or two of the four areas that their research indicated were essential to making sound career decisions: personality, interests, skills, and priorities.
YES!, standing for Youth Exploration Survey, launched it’s paper version in the US in 1995. Bette Noble was instrumental in developing this tool, adapting it from Career Direct (then Career Pathways) so that it could be understood and utilized by twelve-to-sixteen-year-olds. The paper version was sold up to 2012 in USA and then decommissioned.
YES! was first used in Brazil (in Portuguese) at the end of 2007. Initially, trained course leaders taught it to teenagers in their respective churches. Over the years, opportunities opened for YES! to be taught in public, private and military schools, as well as non-governmental organizations and social projects for teenagers in vulnerable situations. This included two groups in juvenile prisons around 2015.
In 2018, Paraguay (Spanish) embraced the paper version of YES! as well. It has been widely utilized from then until now with groups, including government schools. A total of 6415 Facilitators/Teachers were trained in 9 districts of Paraguay, and a total of 89,814 Spanish students did YES!
Dr. Robin Henager-Green PhD, MBA (Associate Dean, Whitworth School of Business) did the research and updated the questions for currently relevant Career Groups. We began to program the online version of YES! for global use, including the US once again.