Insight

Product deep-dive: Career Exploration Portals

Let me ask you: as a working professional in your current role,  did you know the role was available to you at age 18? Or did you take any form of formal training to get there? I posed the same question to the team at infogr8, and not one person answered yes. Granted, it’s a small sample in a particular field of work, but by law of statistical regularity I would bet the same would be true for more than less of the UK or US population.

I’d argue it’s never been a more exciting time in the world of work. Industry 4.0 and technological leaps, contrary to fears of job loss, will further push and expand the occupations available to us. 

As new industries, skills and occupations emerge, at a time where innovation happens at a faster pace than skills develop and even career advisors can’t keep up. If you didn’t know the current role was available to you at 18, how will your future talent find their occupation in your industry today?  

Take the role of an influencer. It didn’t really exist until 2014. The data backs this up, too. The term did not appear in the public lexicon until early 2010s when search term interest started to spike. Today, it’s a booming sector in its own right, with estimates pointing to an industry worth $21.1 billion as of 2023. This is a significant increase of 29% from $16.4 billion the previous year.

The role of ‘influencer’ didn’t really exist until 2014. Career exploration, led by data, can help us navigate the new world of work as it emerges. Source: Google Trends.

How can data help? Career exploration, powered by data and backed up with insight wrapped together in a career exploration portal.

An important benefit of better career exploration is that employers can staff their most hard-to-fill roles more easily. According to the CIPD, upwards of 44% of UK employers describe themselves as having vacancies that are proving to be a tough ask to fill.

Let’s dive into how this solution supports your industry needs.

Bringing clarity to career exploration

As the global race for talent heats up, organisations and industry bodies need to demystify what an occupation or field of work looks like, while at the same time attracting the best talent. Our solution integrates and connects multi-layers of rich data to inform better decisions with a powerful end-to-end solution that combines form with function. 

• Attract talent – An effective way to boost talent attraction and retention and support your workforce as they navigate the quagmire of career opportunities.

• Change perceptions – to work in tech is not to work for Google, Apple or Meta. Almost every organisation from SME to NGO touches on tech. Enhance the image of what a career in your sector looks like. 

• Break down barriers – An effective way to bring to life complex or intimidating career data in a way that puts the user in control, enhancing career mobility and candidate diversity.

• Deliver value – Open up value beyond a jobseeker audience to deliver an engaging experience for viewing and contrasting the insights that matter to you.

The benefits of tracking career pathways – for employers and job applicants

Let’s take a proof-of-concept example to demonstrate what this looks like in practice.

The animation below shows a brief glimpse of one of our Career Exploration Portals in action. Centred around the IT industry, it provides the user with data-backed insights into potential career trajectories and the salaries and skills development involved along the way.

Some of the benefits of our Career Exploration Portals include:

• Customisable and intuitive interfaces – that behave like your brand and make it easy to drill down and make decisions based on the data.

• Skills match – building on our Skills Gap Analyser products [insert link], any meaningful career exploration starts by understanding and mapping skills in order to surface relevant careers.

• Career pathway visualisation – let the audience visualise their career steps in your industry with a powerful pathway visual.

• In-demand occupations – surface the hottest roles or the most important to be filled, whilst providing a full picture of an occupation beyond superficial.

• Hard-to-fill vacancies – the CIPD reports that upwards of 44% of UK employers describe themselves as having vacancies that are proving hard to fill, like education, construction or healthcare.

• Hear from real people – plug in real-world testimonials from people in your industry to make it feel real.

• Connect talent with specialist advice – generate leads through connecting talent to specialist advisors.

Stay tuned for a release this autumn with our partners at CompTIA, where we’ll be releasing a fresh-new career navigator to explore a career in tech.