The buzz around artificial intelligence doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Launching such tools as ChatGPT and similar has caused humans to explore the potential applications and benefits of this technology.
Believe it or not, AI can potentially change the career counseling sector for students as well.
Top 3 challenges in career prep facing students
Before we explore the possible role of artificial intelligence in improving career guidance for students, we must understand at which point this sector is right now.
Despite the broad accessibility of information, tools, and resources for it, career guidance is still in its infancy. Here are the primary challenges that hold students back from exploring job markets and preparing for their careers:
- Lack of guidance: Studies reveal that a whopping 92% of students didn’t receive proper career counseling as of 2021. To address the problem, we must ensure that more schools and colleges offer guidance and also encourage students to use it
- Lack of time: Even when they have access to the much-needed counseling, many students still don’t receive it due to a banal lack of time. Hefty academic loads and piles of homework assignments leave students with no time for other important things. In many cases, the only way to solve this challenge is for students to find a trusted paper writing service to write an essay for me and save as much time as they need for counseling
- Copycat decisions: Due to a lack of guidance and understanding of their own desires and passions, many young people tend to choose their careers in a copycat manner. That said, by simply watching what choices their peers make. The solution to this problem requires deep work with every student aimed at exploring different opportunities, finding passions, and eliminating fears
How AI is revolutionizing career guidance for students
Despite certain challenges, we can’t deny the importance of solid career counseling for students. Career guidance leads to better futures. In broader terms, it enables individuals to reflect on their skills, interests, and qualifications, discover available opportunities, and find the right paths that suit their needs.
Although the concept of career counseling has been around for ages, it wasn’t working perfectly. But now, AI seems to be revolutionizing this sector. Let’s review the core benefits of using artificial intelligence as a career advisor.
More Precision
Sometimes, face-to-face guidance may lack precision due to a human factor. Yet, personalization is one of the most crucial elements of efficient career preparation.
AI, on the other hand, enables us to create dynamic and hyper-personalized career resources and platforms that will consider every student’s individuality, character, goals, and needs. Hence, such platforms can provide deeper, better insights into suitable career paths for each individual.
More data-driven insights
Human counselors may have excellent education and lots of experience. Yet, their capabilities are always limited compared to those of a machine.
AI can access and process much larger volumes of information, such as:
The current state of job markets;
- Growth rates of different industries
- Skills demands
- Rising trends
- Average salaries
- Etc.
With access to all this information, AI can supply students with much more informed insights and offer the best opportunities based on real-time trends.
Better Accessibility
Studies show that nine out of ten schools lack funding for delivering sufficient career advice. As a result, they either don’t offer it at all or can’t ensure its proper quality. And even if your school offers it, you are always bound to specific working days and hours to receive counseling.
Now, imagine having a personal career advisor right on your phone or computer. AI-powered career advice tools can be accessible anytime and anywhere, making job market exploration more accessible than ever.
Better Future-Readiness
Artificial intelligence already has predictive analytics capabilities. It can analyze current markets and trends to predict what will be in demand in the future.
As a student needing career advice, you can use this feature to predict the most trending job markets, demand for specific skills, market fluctuations, etc. Such insights can help you guide your career even better and become more future-ready.
Better personal growth and development insights
Currently, the labor market is highly dynamic and competitive. In the future, you’ll have to demonstrate outstanding skills to outdo the competition and jump-start your career. Unfortunately, career counselors won’t always be able to help you understand the current skill demands and detect your skill gaps.
AI-powered platforms, on the other hand, should be able to provide you with more tools and resources for personal development. It’s predicted that they will be able to help you identify your current level of skills and existing gaps, recommend handy courses and materials for bridging these gaps, and even deliver interactive learning experiences tailored to your needs.
Additionally, AI can provide students with real-time interview training. Also, you can find the best AI essay writer to help prepare essays for internships or use AI resume builders to make a killer CV for your job search. These and many other features of AI can help you better prepare for your future career.
Potential problems in AI adoption for career guidance
Artificial intelligence is actively evolving, offering more and more benefits across all sectors. Career advice is no exception. As you can see, AI has plenty of benefits and opportunities that can simplify career counseling for students and help them become more future-ready than ever. Yet, there are a few issues that are still there.
First of all, there is a potential bias issue. Although AI is a machine rather than a human being, it’s being trained by humans. Unless AI-powered career advice tools are trained sensitively, there is a risk that they may retain discrimination and bias that currently exist in the job market.
Another potential issue is safety. AI tools are still new and underdeveloped. Hence, there are certain concerns about data privacy and security when using such tools.
Also, there is a potential hazard to human career advisors. Now that AI technology is developing rapidly, many specialists across different industries are afraid that their jobs might be replaced by AI in the future. The same risk could become quite pressing for counselors. On top of that, we must acknowledge that the loss of emotional support, empathy, and human touch that counselors can provide to students can negatively affect the outcomes of career guidance. Thus, there may still be the need for additional counseling from human advisors, especially for vulnerable individuals.
The bottom line
Artificial intelligence was designed and implemented to make our daily lives simpler and more efficient, especially in terms of accessing information. After being around for some time, this technology has already confirmed its potential benefits across different sectors. Now, you see that career guidance is also among them.
Although there are some challenges, the potential benefits of AI in career counseling outweigh the cons. If we address the existing issues adequately, AI has the potential to choose students’ lives for the better and help them become much more future-ready.
Featured image credit: Freepik.
