Celebrating over 50 years of creating successful futures

In 1969 a Leicestershire County Council team was tasked with creating a computer database of high-quality occupational information. They also had to find a way to analyse interests and match them to career ideas—Careers Advisory Service Computer Aid (CASCAID) was born!

How we got here

1969 - 1972

The CASCAid project was born in response to a need for a computerised tool to store and share occupational information.

1979

33 local authorities were using CASCAid to support the work of careers officers in schools across the country.

1980

We partnered with Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montfort University) to expand our service to support students in higher education institutions.

1982

More and more schools had computers on site, so we launched a micro-computer version that did away with the need to send careers questionnaires away for processing.

1985

84 local authorities across the country were using CASCAid to support their careers guidance provision.

1986-1987

Not content to sit back and relax, we added Subject-Wise and Jobwise to our offering. Subject-Wise linked school subjects to career choices, while Jobwise focused on 14-16 year old students who wanted more information to help them make career choices.

1991

We launched Kudos! Kudos represented the best features of the original CASCAid programme and the Jobwise programme. It was designed to be used on a ‘personal computer’.

1992

A collaboration with Sheffield Adult Guidance and Information Service (SAGIS) resulted in Adult Directions - an interactive programme to assist adults in their career choices.

1996

We launched CD-ROM versions of all our popular products!

2007

Kudos and Adult Directions (now Kudos AD) were launched exclusively for use online.

2017

We joined forces with Xello (formerly Career Cruising), our North American partners for over 20 years.

2019

We launched Xello--our brand-new, highly engaging online program to help every secondary school student become future ready!

Meet our passionate team

Together we’re on a mission to create successful futures. Collaborating to do great things and deliver delight for educators and students, it's what unites us as a team.