Project Description
The Problem
For young people, choosing a career path can be a daunting experience. There are a wide range of industries and occupations that are all constantly adapting. In ten years time - new occupations will emerge and some will recede. How do we ensure that young people are prepared for future job opportunities?
Project Goals
Our ‘Future Jobs Finder’ app aims to:
◆ Help prepare young people for future careers by showing them which occupations will be in demand in the future.
◆ Allow people to understand the educational pathways to be qualified for their desired occupation.
◆ Assist in getting young people in contact with industry professionals so that they can ask questions.
◆ Help young people discover more about their preferred occupations.
How Does it Work?
Our application shows occupations to users that we think they might be interested in. They can choose to either pass, like, superlike, or skip the occupation.
Suggestions are based on their previous responses, as well as the predicted employment growth over the next five years (datasets provided by the Labour Market Information Portal and ACT Government, read more about how we use this data in the ‘Data Story’ section below).
Clicking on the info button will display more information about the selected occupation. Such as detailed current employment numbers, and predicted employment numbers. This allows users to plan their futures and not to get stuck in an occupation which may be experiencing significant negative growth.There is also a button that will search the internet for you to find the education path you’ll need to take to be qualified for this occupation.
If a user likes an occupation, a chat window will appear that will allow you to get in contact with an industry professional to discuss any questions you may have about the field. Industry professionals will be able to sign up to become a mentor - and answer any questions users may have.
Preparing Young People for 2029 and Beyond
Our project takes into account future changes in the labour market to help prepare young people for job opportunities. Allowing users to quickly find the education path they’ll need to take ensures that they’ll be equipped with the right skills when the time comes.
Data Story
The Data
Links to the datasets we’ve used can be found in the ‘Team Data Sets’ section below.
How We Use It
Our application shows occupations that we think users might be interested in, based on their previous responses, as well as the predicted employment growth over the next five years. Occupations and their predicted growth data is provided by the Australian Government Labour Market Information Portal.
Our application also allows users to discover occupations that they may not have considered previously, like ‘Bakers & Pastrycooks’ - which will experience an estimated 12.6% employment growth over the next five years and may be in demand. We use the predicted growth data from the Labour Market Information Portal to show users occupations that will experience significant employment growth.
Data is also pulled from local sources - in this case data provided by the ACT government - regarding job vacancies and skilled migration policies. This data allows us to further augment the data provided by the Labour Market Information Portal - and in turn to show more relevant occupation suggestions to users based on their local area.