Background

Each step of a career starts with one question – what’s next? From the moment a student enters tenth standard, every other person will ask them, “What is your next step? Which group or stream are you planning to join? What is your life goal? How much do you want to earn?” This endless array of questions pushes the student into a dilemma. The story continues till the student gets a job and starts earning. The set of questions seems daunting and impossible to answer for the students in government schools and colleges.

India Literacy Project, with its continuous efforts to improve the government education sector, have started career guidance for the students in ninth standard and above. The process guarantees students the exact data and information they need to plan their career path right from a young age. The information includes details on different available careers, different options a student can consider, and different ways in which a student can reach their desired career choice, among other things. The process includes a customized interest finder and assessment tool which helps the student understand their capabilities and skill sets with a reliability rating of 86% and also a comprehensive analysis on the combination of different careers.

With a reach into  almost every school with which ILP is involved, the Career Guidance Chatbot has become a vital component in programming. In a short time, ILP’s Career Guidance Chatbot has reached almost 2,00,000 students and 5000 schools in seven states.

Approach

Our Career Guidance and Pathways program aims to equip children in government schools to effectively compete for jobs in the industry. It is driven by students’ interests, is adaptive to their abilities, is relevant to their lives beyond school, and enables them to create and take responsibility for pathways to their desired careers. 

A key aspect of the program is to enlist and train all the stakeholders – school management, teachers, parents, and community — to support the students.

Career Guidance sessions, including skills and competencies testing, occur in schools and villages for students in Grades 9, 10, 11, and 12. Group sessions are also followed up with one-on-one sessions for students after their tenth and twelfth exams. The program’s content tools include the following:

  • Career Chart – A visual representation of the possible pathways to a career of choice
  • Career Planner – A booklet in multiple languages that describes over 100 careers, the educational qualifications needed, and the prospects
  • Website and Mobile App – A website and mobile app that allows students to learn about all the careers, courses and colleges in their local area as well as across India.

ILP also guides students through navigating financial support options provided by the government and other local organizations. ILP also provides select scholarships and mentoring to students in rural areas, making them role models for other students.

Chatbot

Recently, ILP planned to digitize its projects, starting with career guidance. Most of the process went into identifying the ways in which students can access the digital platform. But, since most of the target audience is from remote areas and government educational institutions with lower family incomes and less access to digital platforms, the focus turned to simplifying the process and accessibility became a priority.

ILP found that the best way is to bring career guidance to WhatsApp – the easiest way for anyone and everyone to reach it. They came to Glific, a plug and play platform for NGOs to create and publish their chatbots. The process of creating the career guidance chatbot began in July 2020 and with the efforts of the team, the first career guidance chatbot was up on WhatsApp in a record five months’ time.

ILP has incorporated a simple principle – Know, Learn, and Spread – in developing, reaching, and studying the usage of the chatbot. The data included in the chatbot is easily understood and can be shared with anyone in need of answers. The chatbot includes details on courses, on 96 major careers, on entrance exams and scholarships by state, and on industry-standard psychometric assessments.

ILP’s studies have shown that this is 90% of the information required by any student in search of answers. With its release in February 2021, first in the Hyderabad region, they registered 250 students. Within the next 45 days, they launched it in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Odisha, Bihar, and Jharkhand, eventually in English, Telugu, Urdu, Tamil, Kannada, Odia, and Hindi.

Impact

It took 70 days to register 500 users, 120 days to register 1000, and 150 days to register 2000 students on the bot from every corner of the operating areas. By the time ILP reached 150 days and 2000 users, the number of messages between the bot and the users crossed 50,000.

Recently, Ullas Trust and Mission Sammridhi have expressed interest in supporting ILP’s digital initiative in career guidance after the release of the chatbot.

In upcoming months, ILP plans to expand the purview of the Chatbot by creating separate channels for students, teachers & counselors, and NGO partners with relevant information. They are also looking into introducing Natural Language Processing, a process in which the bot responds to any question asked by the user in any language. Till now, Version 1 of the bot supported only pre-fixed data sets and questions with relevant information. As the number of users increased, the questioning pattern has changed, and ILP set out to release Version 2 with the NLP option where the user can pose any career-related question in any language.

Stay tuned for further updates!