CAREER ENHANCER - A Guidance Portal to Connect the Graduated Job Seekers / employees with the Job Providers and Scholarship Providers in Sri Lanka

Abstract

In today’s competitive world, the selection of a right career or a higher education has become a big challenge for all the graduates who have just passed out from the university or currently working somewhere who wants to develop their career as well as educational skills. This situation has created a huge demand for the process of career guidance and counselling. It is an extremely broad and a comprehensive concept. The aim of this project is to analyze the problems in current decision – making process followed by graduated job seekers and employees when choosing a proper career path and/or higher education and to design, develop, test and evaluate a web-based solution to support them to find a most suitable career and/or a scholarship to enhance their career as well as educational skills. The problem has been catered to the target group by developing a career guidance and counselling system (Career Enhancer). Further, it has been included a career assessment test to measure the six personality scores (RIASEC) of a person by assessing the different personality metrics such as Realistic, Investigative, Social, Enterprising Conventional, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness and openness. The six personality scores have been generated through a trained model and the user-provided answers to the career assessment test. Based on the career test results, user can view the job library or scholarships through the career enhancer. Moreover, user can contact career counsellors to get the advices via the system before applying for the jobs or scholarships. The solution has been evaluated by the users who are involving with the system such as job seekers/employees, job providers, scholarship providers and career counsellors in order to ensure the Usability, Simplicity, Suitability, Understandability and Applicability of the system.