Authored by Paridhi Khaitan, Managing Director, ProTeen
According to the World Economic Forum report, the gap between skills people learn and skills people need is becoming more glaring as traditional learning is failing to equip students with the knowledge they need to thrive in the 21st-century. Traditional jobs are quickly becoming obsolete.
By 2022, an estimated 133 million new roles will emerge in response to the new division of labor between humans, machines, and algorithms. To make situations even more complicated, most students remain ignorant about the current job scenario, with 93% of Indian students from the 14-21 age group being aware of only 7 career options, according to a 2019 report.
Modern counselling needs to bridge this gap using technology and groom young adults for their dream jobs while they are still studying.
How modern counselling can help?
The digital disruption has changed the face of career counselling. Advancements like data-oriented career counselling, gamification, and career demos have reshaped new-age digital career guidance for the 21st-century, replacing the traditional counselling approach.
Here’s how:
By providing expansive and holistic assessments, data-oriented counselling enables a 3-dimensional awareness of all the facets important to making career decisions. Standard assessment tests like personality and aptitude are now integrated with interest and multiple intelligence tests to deliver a holistic overview of a student’s overall fit within today’s complex career market. This gives students a robust awareness of their true self, which is the first step towards discovering their ideal career fit. Students also have access to career libraries that cover the most recent and trending new-age career options along with hundreds of other prevalent careers. By providing a deeper glimpse into the industry landscape, students are empowered to make well-informed choices. Digital platforms also leverage a fusion of technology and AI advancements to deliver awareness of the right career fit to students. With AI algorithms and machine learning, personalised reports allow students to map skill sets, personalities, and capabilities to the various careers available, enabling them to see their ideal career fit long before approaching a career decision.
Another introduction has been gamification, which introduces experiential learning that optimizes and encourages learning among students. It is an engaging technique that offers a more student-centric experience in counselling. According to ScienceDirect’s 2020 report, challenge-based gamification in education raised student performance by 34.75%. For students, gamification has provided a fun and interactive way to be career-ready.
Gamification has also led to the development of career demos. This unique option allows students to experience careers right from the comfort of their homes as they can experience industry internships in an experiential virtual setting. This engaging digital experience helps students make an informed career choice by effectively addressing questions like what a career entails, how a career progression unravels, what are the skills required for a particular career – all at the click of a button.
Conclusion
While career counselling was always a necessity in India, the mass ignorance owing to the current social and industrial shift has turned it into a pressing need that is best solved through technology. Modern career counselling today places an increased emphasis on proper career exploration and highlights the presence of a wide range of lucrative careers options prevalent today. Digitally powered career counselling offers tailor-made insights, analytics, and recommendations, providing students with a roadmap to their ideal careers and navigating them towards the right choices at the right time.
With the career landscape set to further evolve and adapt to future trends, to be at the forefront of leveraging tech advancements effectively is where the future of career counselling is headed.
