OBJECTIVES
The Careers Department has been working with the Rio Tinto Social Investment team since 2021.
Rio Tinto partnered with The Careers Department within their Future Pathways programme guided by an expert education Advisory Council chaired by David Gonski.
The program aims to address one of the most persistent challenges in Australian education; that career choices can be influenced by school resources, a limited pool of influence, geographic factors and unconscious bias, which together can leave students with a limited understanding of jobs and industries.
The goal: reach students in low-ICSEA schools; places where industry opportunity is limited, attendance is a challenge, and ‘work concepts’ can be limited. A key priority was expanding what students believed was possible for them; and breaking down the barriers to entry to reach these students.
PARTNERSHIP INCLUSIONS
Across a five year period, The Careers Department designed and delivered a careers education pilot program across 700 schools nationally; combining face-to-face workshops with an algorithm-led digital platform built to profile students, recommend career pathways, and deliver skills-based and virtual work experience content in a format that actually engages young people.
The pilot program included a custom-built profiling exercise, more than 50 new transferable skills modules aligned to Australian skills classification data, and badged micro-credentialing built directly into the platform; giving students a verified record of the skills and experiences they had accumulated.
The face-to-face workshops opened with a TikTok-inspired profiling exercise; students scrolled through short video content, liked what resonated with them, and the platform used that data to build a personalised Game Plan of careers to explore. This was followed by ten recommended transferable skills modules tailored to each student's nominated pathways, before students moved into Virtual Work Experience tasks.
The program was deliberately designed to break down barriers to entry for students who are most at risk of disengaging from their future; including First Nations students, first generation Australians navigating language barriers, and those who are neurodiverse. For these students, a traditional careers program rarely lands. This one was built for them from the ground up.
Recognising that unconscious bias around careers forms as early as age nine, The Careers Department also developed a primary school extension of the program; offering 25 teacher-led modules designed to build career awareness, digital literacy, and critical thinking skills in younger students before those biases take hold.
RESULTS
The TikTok inspired profiling exercise achieved a 96% completion rate for students involved in the pilot. Students spent an average of 17 minutes on the exercise and went on to nominate an average of 5 careers to explore in their Game Plan.
This pilot was about working with some of the most disadvantaged students in Australia; and the impact is bigger than ‘numbers and stats,’ like the story below:
Student Hannah, a 15-year-old Indigenous student from Lightning Ridge NSW who had recently returned from a leave of absence from school participated in the pilot program. She spent 14 minutes on the profiling exercise and was recommended roles including Graphic Designer, Art Teacher, Film and Video Editor, Film and Television Producer, Retail Manager, and Event Planner.
She went on to complete an interactive ‘Planning and Organising’ skills module; where she was asked to coordinate the logistics of a hypothetical music event, answering 16 competency questions correctly in 24 minutes.
She went on to watch 2 videos about careers in event planning.
Her teacher reflected, "I am impressed that Hannah was able to engage and complete this task. For students like Hannah, it's about seeing different careers that she may never have heard of. She is an example of a student who can engage really positively and constructively when she has been prompted effectively with a resource; but she won't do this independently. The fact that she worked consistently for the last hour is a testament to the platform's communication style. It resonates with students."
LEARNINGS:
The students who need careers education the most are often the hardest to reach through traditional means. What this pilot proved is that format is everything.
A gamified, student-led experience; where young people feel like they are discovering highly personalised, geotargeted and highly relevant videos and modules, produces measurably different outcomes.