A good vocation match is on the mind of religious sisters, such as those here who gathered at the IRL’s 2017 National Meeting in Mundelein, IL.
Vocation Match, sponsored by the VISION Vocation Network, is used by many religious communities to bring in names of vocation candidates.
Vocation Match is one of several online Catholic marketing services which offer to find candidates for religious and consecrated life.
Discovering one’s vocation is a process of discernment and a realization of one’s place in God’s plan. Many people have been through such struggles and probably often have wished that God could just plug it in to Google Maps and help them see the direction to their vocation match.
Vocation Match’s thorough survey
Vocation Match’s work has been innovative in leading people to finding their vocation. It’s simple enough. If an individual is on their website, they fill out a long survey. The survey is intended to funnel them towards his or her best fit, and it then provides a list of communities that would be suitable based on the survey results.
The candidate chooses from the list who will get his or her information. Sometimes it is more than one hundred communities. Each community listed gets that candidate’s name. Thus, each candidate then receives emails, post office mailings and phone calls from many vocation directors. But this can be overwhelming, as some candidates of such services have reported.
Vocation Match is a long survey that really hones in on many specific categories. We will admit that it is very thorough, offering suggestions about communities along the way as questions are answered.
(You might also want to read this website’s review of a similar program, that of Vocations Placement.)
How Vocation Match differs from the Come & See Program
Our program, on the other hand, is the Come & See Vocation Promotion Program, developed by Kevin J. Banet, of TreeFrogClick marketing. The Come & See program differs in that each quiz is customized for one religious community. Thus, when the candidate takes the quiz, he or she is then contacted only by one community, not many. Moreover, the customized quiz features photos from the one community.
Furthermore, the Come & See Program not only finds candidates but develops their interest. It does so with a newsletter system. Newsletters are sent by email, and they are customized for one community. The newsletters help them discern their vocation, learn more about religious/consecrated life, and they teach them about the charism and apostolate of that community.
The Come & See Program also offers coaching and training of vocation directors on doing individual contacts with candidates, and the use of software. The amount of such coaching depends on the level of the program.
Thus, instead of sharing the candidate names with dozens or even hundreds of other communities, the Come & See Program works one-one-one with each candidate.
Unique qualification system
Furthermore, the Come & See Program uses a unique qualification system that gauges not only how they answered the quiz, but how they have responded to the newsletters sent to them. Each month, a list of the best candidates is sent to the vocation director. The best candidates are not only those who look good on the survey, but have expressed an interest in that particular community.
Through the Come & See Vocation Promotion Program, a one-on-one approach is achieved that concentrates a vocation match on the characteristics of a particular community, and also develops the interest of each candidate in that community.
