Skilled-trades pathways for the workforce America is building.
Schola Education LLC connects non-college-bound youth, college-bound students still navigating direction, first-generation immigrants, veterans, and adult career changers to high-demand U.S. skilled-trades occupations through validated psychometric assessment and closed-loop employer placement.
A three-track practice built on validated assessment.
Founded by a career counselor with two decades of practice.
Servet Gulsun Sirin — psychologist, M.A. in Educational Management — has spent 20+ years in career counseling, vocational assessment, and large-scale workforce-orientation programs. She is the field architect of CharacterIX's national dissemination in Türkiye, having coordinated the deployment of the assessment system to 146,457 participants and the certification of 733 practitioners. She is the author of Meslekler Rehberi (Career Guide), distributed to 250,000 high-school students. She founded Schola Education LLC in Florida in 2024 to extend assessment-driven workforce intermediation into the U.S. skilled-trades context.
Read the full profileOperating within the U.S. workforce-development context.
Schola's work is positioned within the workforce-capacity context recognized by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (skilled-trades occupational projections), the Department of Labor (workforce-intermediation frameworks under WIOA), and federal investment legislation including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). These frameworks document a sustained need for skilled-trades labor in HVAC, electrical, plumbing, and construction occupations — the demand that Schola's pilot addresses at the candidate-matching layer.
Five audiences, one assessment-driven practice.
Non-College-Bound Youth
High-school graduates and young adults (16–24) for whom a four-year college pathway is not the most realistic or desired route.
College-Bound Youth in Decision Phase
High-school students considering a four-year college pathway but still working through field of study and major selection. Schola supports the decision-stage work — not college applications.
First-Generation Immigrant Youth
Young people from immigrant families navigating documented information gaps in U.S. career pathways.
Veterans & Military Spouses
Service members transitioning to civilian careers; military spouses navigating geographic mobility.
Adult Career Changers
Working adults seeking transitions from sectors with limited mobility into skilled-trades occupations with documented demand.
Building skilled-trades pathways in South Florida and beyond.
Schola Education LLC welcomes inquiries from employer partners, school counselors, workforce-development organizations, and individuals seeking career guidance in skilled-trades occupations.
Get in touch →About Schola Education LLC and its founder.
Schola Education LLC is a Florida-incorporated career-counseling and workforce-development company, founded in 2024 by Servet Gulsun Sirin — a career counselor and workforce psychologist with 20+ years of practice and the field architect of CharacterIX's national dissemination in Türkiye.
A Florida-incorporated career-counseling firm.
Schola Education LLC was incorporated in the State of Florida in January 2024. The company operates at the intersection of career counseling, vocational assessment, and workforce intermediation, with primary operations in South Florida and a national methodology-dissemination program. Schola is the U.S. agency partner of CharacterIX (CharacterIX Eğitim Hizmetleri A.Ş.), the developer of the ProEnneagram®-based assessment system at the technical core of Schola's practice.
Schola's practical model has two tracks. Track 1 is a closed-loop pilot in South Florida — assessing candidates, matching them to employer partners in HVAC, electrical, plumbing, pool/spa service, and hospitality facility-maintenance occupations, and supporting one-year retention. Track 2 is national methodology dissemination — a counselor certification program for school and workforce-development practitioners, peer-reviewed research publication, and an open employer toolkit.
Servet Gulsun Sirin
Career Counselor and Workforce Psychologist · Founder, Schola Education LLC
Servet Gulsun Sirin is a career counselor and workforce psychologist with two decades of practice in vocational assessment, career counseling, and large-scale educational-orientation programs. She holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Educational Management and Supervision. Her professional identity has remained focused on a single field — career counseling and workforce development — over the entirety of her career.
Field Architect of CharacterIX
From 2018 to 2022, Ms. Sirin served as the national coordinator and field architect of CharacterIX's deployment across Türkiye. CharacterIX is a ProEnneagram®-based career assessment system developed by CharacterIX Eğitim Hizmetleri A.Ş. and validated on a 21,140-participant sample (Cronbach's α 0.877; KMO > 0.90). Under Ms. Sirin's coordination, the system was administered to 146,457 participants and 733 practitioners were certified to deliver it. Her contribution was the field-administration infrastructure, the career-program matching content used in the assessment-to-pathway translation, and the practitioner certification framework — not the development of the underlying psychometric instrument, which was developed by and remains with CharacterIX Eğitim Hizmetleri A.Ş.
Educational Leadership
From 2012 to 2023, Ms. Sirin served as Director of Candidate Relations at Istanbul Okan University. In that role she coordinated the university's national outreach to high schools across Türkiye's 81 provinces and led campus-based initiatives reaching tens of thousands of students annually. From 2004 to 2012, she served as Guidance Coordinator at one of Türkiye's leading educational networks, structuring counseling systems used in hundreds of schools.
Authorship and Public Education
Ms. Sirin is the author of Meslekler Rehberi (Career Guide), a profession-orientation book distributed free to 250,000 high-school students between 2007 and 2011 through educational institution networks. She created and hosted Education Workshop, a nationally broadcast Turkish television program on educational and career topics. She has delivered seminars to approximately 250,000 students across all 81 provinces of Türkiye over the course of her career.
Founding of Schola Education LLC
In January 2024, Ms. Sirin founded Schola Education LLC in Florida to extend assessment-driven workforce intermediation into the U.S. skilled-trades context — a sector recognized by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Labor, and federal investment legislation as a workforce-capacity priority.
Two decades in career counseling.
Three contributions distinguish the record from standard practice.
First — Scaling a Validated Assessment
As the field architect of CharacterIX's national rollout in Türkiye, Ms. Sirin built the operational infrastructure that took a peer-reviewed psychometric instrument from research validation to nationwide field administration: 146,457 participants assessed across Türkiye's 81 provinces, with the assessment-to-pathway content translated into actionable counseling guidance.
Second — Building a Practitioner Network
She designed and led the certification program that trained 733 practitioners — career counselors, school guidance professionals, and educational administrators — in the standardized administration and interpretation of the CharacterIX system. This network now constitutes the human infrastructure that delivers the assessment to incoming participants.
Third — Public-Facing Career Education at National Scale
Through Meslekler Rehberi (250,000 distributed copies), the Education Workshop television program, and direct seminars across all 81 provinces of Türkiye reaching approximately 250,000 students, Ms. Sirin has functioned as a national-level public educator on career decisions — a role that few practitioners in any country occupy at this scale.
Why Schola exists.
Schola Education LLC's mission is to extend assessment-driven career pathways to the populations whom traditional college-oriented systems underserve — and to disseminate the methodology so the practice scales beyond a single firm.
Assessment-driven career pathway matching.
Schola's practice is built on a peer-reviewed psychometric assessment system — CharacterIX — and a structured matching framework that translates assessment results into specific occupational pathways and employer placements.
CharacterIX — developed by the institution.
CharacterIX is a ProEnneagram®-based psychometric career assessment system developed by CharacterIX Eğitim Hizmetleri A.Ş. The instrument consists of 73 items that produce 136 personality and competency factors. Three differentiated item sets exist within the system, each tailored to a population: a White-Collar set for office and professional pathways; a Blue-Collar set for skilled-trades and technical pathways; and a Vocational Orientation set for students still navigating educational decisions.
CharacterIX is the proprietary system of CharacterIX Eğitim Hizmetleri A.Ş. Schola Education LLC operates as the U.S. agency partner under a non-exclusive three-year Agency Agreement. Schola does not own, develop, or modify the underlying psychometric instrument; Schola applies it within U.S. skilled-trades pathway matching and contributes the U.S. validation cohort, the U.S. employer-occupation translation framework, and the U.S. practitioner network.
Take the CharacterIX assessment
Candidates can complete the assessment directly through the CharacterIX official portal. Schola counselors then review the resulting report with the candidate during the pathway-counseling stage.
21,140-participant validation sample.
The CharacterIX instrument was validated on a Turkish sample of 21,140 participants. Reported reliability and structural indices include:
These indices indicate that the instrument met the conventional thresholds for reliability and construct validity in the validation population. A separate U.S. validation cohort is in preparation.
One instrument, three calibrated sets.
White-Collar
Designed for assessment of candidates oriented toward office, managerial, and professional occupations. Generates personality, work-style, and competency factor scores keyed to white-collar occupational profiles.
Blue-Collar
Designed for skilled-trades and technical occupations — the set most directly relevant to Schola's U.S. pilot. Calibrates differently from the white-collar set in items concerning manual reasoning, spatial cognition, work-environment preferences, and tolerance for physical labor conditions.
Vocational Orientation
Designed for younger participants — typically high-school-aged — who have not yet committed to a specific occupational direction. Combines exploration-stage and decision-stage items to inform early pathway counseling.
How Schola uses CharacterIX in the United States.
In 2024, Schola Education LLC and CharacterIX Eğitim Hizmetleri A.Ş. entered into a non-exclusive Agency Agreement granting Schola the right to administer the CharacterIX system within U.S. operations for an initial three-year term. The agreement is non-exclusive — meaning Schola is one of multiple potential agency partners. The agreement covers system administration, practitioner training, and U.S. validation work. Intellectual property in the underlying instrument remains with the developer.
U.S. validation cohort and peer-reviewed publication.
Within the first year of U.S. operations, Schola is conducting a 1,000-participant validation cohort to evaluate CharacterIX's psychometric properties in U.S. populations and to refine the U.S. occupational mapping. The cohort findings are being prepared for peer-reviewed publication in a career-development or career-assessment journal, with Ms. Sirin as first author and a senior co-author from CharacterIX Eğitim Hizmetleri A.Ş. CharacterIX is contributing the assessment licenses for the cohort as an in-kind research contribution.
Field history (Türkiye, 2018–2022).
Between 2018 and 2022, the CharacterIX system was administered to 146,457 participants in Türkiye and 733 practitioners were certified to deliver it. Ms. Sirin coordinated this national rollout as the field architect — building the administration infrastructure, developing the career-program matching content, and leading the practitioner certification framework. This deployment provides the operational basis on which Schola's U.S. practice is built; the U.S. work is not a research demonstration of an untested tool but a context-adapted application of a system with documented field history.
Four service lines, each scoped to its audience.
Schola serves four audiences: individual candidates seeking skilled-trades pathways or college-bound decision support; employers in HVAC and related sectors; counselors pursuing certification; and schools and workforce boards exploring partnerships.
Career assessment and pathway counseling.
Schola works with non-college-bound youth, college-bound students still working through field and major direction, first-generation immigrants, veterans and military spouses, and adult career changers. For non-college-bound and adult candidates, the engagement focuses on skilled-trades pathways. For college-bound students in the decision phase, the engagement focuses on field and major fit — Schola does not provide college application services.
Assessment
Administration of the appropriate CharacterIX item set — typically the Blue-Collar set for skilled-trades-oriented candidates, or the Vocational Orientation set for younger participants still exploring direction. Delivered online or in person.
Pathway Counseling
For trades-oriented candidates: mapping to specific U.S. skilled-trades occupations and entry routes — apprenticeship, employer-direct hire, technical certification, military-skills translation. For college-bound candidates: mapping to fields of study and major selection. The counseling produces a written pathway plan in either case.
Placement & Retention
Where the candidate's pathway plan and the available employer-partner positions align, Schola facilitates introduction and placement. Following placement, Schola provides retention support during the first twelve months — addressing on-the-job challenges and intervening when career-fit issues arise.
Skilled-trades workforce pipeline.
Schola partners with U.S. employers in skilled-trades sectors — HVAC, electrical, plumbing, pool/spa service, and hospitality facility-maintenance — to address the documented gap between hiring need and qualified candidate flow.
Candidate Pipeline
Pre-assessed, pathway-counseled candidates are introduced to employer partners based on demonstrated fit. The interview-and-hiring process begins with a profile-aligned applicant pool, reducing the well-documented mismatch costs in skilled-trades hiring.
Profile Calibration
For each employer partner, Schola calibrates the assessment-to-role mapping using the employer's actual job requirements, retention data, and team-fit considerations. This calibration improves placement fit beyond a generic occupational match.
Retention Partnership
Schola maintains contact with placed candidates during their first twelve months and shares retention-relevant insights with the employer — insights that may inform onboarding, supervisory style, or early-career development.
Certification program.
Track 2 of Schola's model is national methodology dissemination. The counselor certification program prepares school counselors, career-development practitioners, and workforce-board staff to administer the CharacterIX system and to apply assessment-driven matching within their own institutional contexts. Certification follows the framework Ms. Sirin developed for the 733 practitioners certified in Türkiye, adapted to U.S. counseling standards and ethics.
The program combines online modules, supervised practice, and a final certification review. Practitioners completing the program receive credentialing recognized within Schola's national network and may operate as licensed administrators in their own practice settings.
Institutional partnerships.
Schools — particularly those with significant non-college-bound populations — and workforce-development boards can engage Schola at the institutional level. Institutional partnerships are scoped individually but typically include cohort-level assessment of identified student groups, counselor training within the partner institution, and pathway plans developed jointly with the institution's existing guidance infrastructure. Schola does not duplicate or replace existing public workforce services; the partnership model is complementary.
From intake to retention check-in.
For an individual candidate, an engagement typically follows this sequence:
- Initial intake conversation (free, ~20 minutes) to determine fit
- CharacterIX administration (online or in-person, ~45 minutes)
- Counseling session reviewing results and drafting the pathway plan (~90 minutes)
- Where applicable, employer-partner introduction and interview support
- Twelve-month retention check-ins after placement
For an employer, an initial conversation establishes role specifications and the calibration approach; candidate flow begins after the calibration is complete. For a counselor or workforce practitioner, the certification program runs over a defined enrollment period; cohort starts are scheduled in advance.
Two decades of public-facing and professional output.
Beyond direct counseling and operational work, Ms. Sirin has produced a body of public-facing and professional output in career counseling and educational guidance. This page lists the published material, peer-reviewed work, media appearances, and conference presentations that document the methodology and findings underlying Schola's practice.
Published works.
Meslekler Rehberi (Career Guide)
A profession-orientation guidebook for high-school students introducing career options and pathway considerations. Distributed at no cost to 250,000 high-school students between 2007 and 2011 through educational institution networks. An expanded English–Turkish edition is in preparation under the Schola Education LLC imprint.
Editorial review and forthcoming publications.
Invited Peer Reviewer
Invited peer reviewer role requiring demonstrated subject-matter expertise judged credible by the journal's editorial board.
U.S. Validation Cohort Manuscript
Manuscript in preparation for submission to a career-assessment or career-development journal. A second peer-reviewed article is in preparation.
Public broadcasting and press coverage.
Education Workshop (TV Program)
A nationally broadcast Turkish television program on educational and career-development topics, created and hosted by Ms. Sirin. The program ran for multiple seasons and reached a national youth and parent audience.
Press Coverage
Work covered in Turkish national press across two decades, including coverage of the Anatolian Meetings outreach program (annual cohorts of 700–1,200 students from underserved provinces), KariyerFest (Türkiye's first experiential career festival, 50,000+ high-school participants over a decade), and the CharacterIX national rollout.
Seminars across 81 provinces.
Over twenty years, Ms. Sirin has delivered seminars to approximately 250,000 students across all 81 provinces of Türkiye and has been an invited speaker at educational institutions, parent-teacher gatherings, and university orientation events.
In active preparation.
- U.S. validation cohort manuscript on CharacterIX in U.S. skilled-trades populations.
- Expanded English–Turkish edition of Meslekler Rehberi (Career Guide), in development under the Schola Education LLC imprint.
System, employer, and educational partners.
Schola operates within a network of partners across three primary categories: a system partner that provides the underlying assessment infrastructure; employer partners across U.S. skilled-trades sectors; and educational partners supporting language and capability development for placed candidates.
CharacterIX Eğitim Hizmetleri A.Ş.
Schola Education LLC operates under a non-exclusive Agency Agreement with CharacterIX Eğitim Hizmetleri A.Ş., the developer of the CharacterIX assessment system. The agreement grants Schola the right to administer the system within U.S. operations and to certify U.S. practitioners under the standardized framework. CharacterIX provides system access, technical updates, and senior-author support for U.S. validation research; Schola conducts U.S. operations, builds the U.S. practitioner network, and undertakes U.S. validation work.
Skilled-Trades Sector Employers, South Florida
Schola maintains employer-partner relationships across South Florida in HVAC, pool/spa service, hospitality facility-maintenance (including hotel HVAC, electrical, and pool-service positions), and is expanding into electrical and plumbing trades. Employer partners contribute role specifications, retention data, and direct hiring opportunities; Schola contributes pre-assessed candidate flow and post-placement retention support.
Schola's employer partners are Florida-based small and medium businesses operating in the skilled-trades sector. Specific partner identities are kept confidential at the partners' request. Employer organizations interested in partnership are invited to contact Schola directly.
Capability and Language Development Support
Schola maintains a Cooperation Agreement with Days Academy for white-label English-language instruction support to placed candidates whose career pathway includes English-language capability development. The Days Academy partnership is one example of the educational support layer Schola assembles around individual candidates as needed.
Zayoun Group
Zayoun Group is a founding employer partner of Schola in the South Florida hospitality sector. Technical and facility-based positions across the group's hotel portfolio — including facility maintenance, HVAC, pool and spa service, and electrical roles — serve as a direct placement pathway for candidates who complete Schola's CharacterIX-based assessment process.
This partnership is designed to address the often-overlooked back-of-house technical workforce needs of the hospitality industry through a structured skilled-trades pipeline. Schola is responsible for matching candidates to suitable positions based on personality profile and competency factors; Zayoun Group manages employment, on-the-job training, and retention.
Inquiries from prospective partners are welcome.
Schola welcomes inquiries from employers in skilled-trades sectors, schools and workforce-development organizations, and complementary service providers. Initial conversations are scoped individually; not every inquiry results in a partnership, and Schola maintains a small network of carefully selected partners rather than a broad partnership roster.
Field history and Year 1 goals.
Schola measures impact at two levels: the operational scale of assessment-driven matching delivered to date, and the dissemination reach of the methodology through certification and publication. The figures below distinguish between field history accumulated in Türkiye under the CharacterIX system Ms. Sirin coordinated, and the goals Schola Education LLC has set for its U.S. operations.
What has been built.
During Ms. Sirin's coordination of CharacterIX's national rollout in Türkiye, the following operational scale was reached:
- 146,457 participants assessed across the country's 81 provinces
- 733 practitioners certified in standardized administration
- 21,140-participant validation sample (Cronbach's α 0.877; KMO > 0.90)
- 250,000 copies of Meslekler Rehberi distributed to high-school students (2007–2011)
- ~250,000 students reached through direct seminars across all 81 provinces over two decades
These figures describe field deployment under the CharacterIX system and the public-education work conducted by Ms. Sirin. They are presented here to document the scale of operational experience underlying Schola's U.S. practice — not as Schola's U.S. accomplishments.
What we are building now.
Schola's U.S. operations launched in 2024. The first year of South Florida operations targets the following measurable outcomes:
- 1,000-participant U.S. validation cohort completed and analyzed
- Peer-reviewed publication submitted to a career-assessment or career-development journal
- Operational pilot capacity established in HVAC, pool/spa service, and hospitality facility-maintenance occupations across South Florida
- First counselor certification cohort enrolled and progressing through the program
- Employer toolkit prepared and made available to partner employers
Progress against these goals is reported in the Year 1 update published at the end of the fiscal year.
Beyond South Florida.
Schola's medium-term plan extends the methodology to additional U.S. metropolitan areas with significant federal-investment-driven skilled-trades demand. Replication candidates include Houston, Phoenix, Columbus, and Atlanta — each chosen for documented skilled-trades labor demand intersecting with federal infrastructure, energy, and manufacturing investments. Replication is sequenced from Year 3 onward, with each metro requiring its own employer-partner network, calibration work, and counselor cohort.
These are planned trajectory targets, not current operational locations. Schola's current operations are in South Florida.
How Schola measures.
Schola tracks five categories of indicators across both pilot operations and methodology dissemination:
- Placement rate — proportion of assessed candidates placed with employer partners within six months
- 12-month retention rate — proportion of placed candidates remaining in role at one year
- Practitioner certifications issued — counselors and workforce practitioners completing the program
- Toolkit downloads and citation — employer-side methodology adoption beyond direct partners
- Peer-reviewed publication — manuscripts submitted, accepted, and cited
Indicators are reviewed annually and reported in summary form on this page.
Get in touch with Schola.
Schola Education LLC welcomes inquiries from individuals seeking career guidance, employers in skilled-trades sectors, school counselors and workforce practitioners interested in certification, and educational and workforce-development institutions exploring partnerships. Use the form below or reach out by email; Schola responds within two business days.
Reach Schola directly.
Address
Schola Education LLC
Miami metropolitan area, Florida
Office Hours
Monday – Friday
9:00 AM – 6:00 PM EST
Initial inquiries answered within two business days.
Four audiences, four kinds of inquiry.
Individuals seeking career guidance
If you are a non-college-bound youth, a high-school student considering a college pathway and exploring field/major direction, a first-generation immigrant, a veteran or military spouse, or an adult considering a career change into skilled-trades occupations, Schola can assess your profile and develop a written pathway plan.
Employers in skilled-trades sectors
If your business operates in HVAC, electrical, plumbing, pool/spa service, hospitality facility-maintenance, or related skilled-trades sectors, and you are seeking a pre-assessed candidate pipeline with retention support, Schola can scope an employer partnership.
Counselors and workforce practitioners
If you are a school counselor, career-development practitioner, or workforce-board staff member interested in certification in assessment-driven matching, Schola can provide enrollment information for the next cohort.
Educational and workforce-development institutions
If your school, district, or workforce board is exploring institutional partnerships in non-college pathway development, Schola can scope an institutional engagement.
Answers to common questions.
If your question is not addressed below, contact us directly.