Thousands of school students have engaged with Youth Engagement Platform Year13’s recently launched Virtual Work Experience during National Careers Week, May 13-19, 2024.
Year13’s Virtual Work Experience platform seeks to solve the problem of school students struggling to find placements by moving employer branded Work Experiences online for students to participate in.
Year13’s After The ATAR 4 Report surveyed 3000+ youth nationally and found 34 per cent of young people don’t
know what career they want to go into, while 39 per cent say a lack of experience is a barrier to pursuing their career.
When it comes to high school work experience, just 32 per cent of young people say it helped with their career
decisions while 38 per cent say they never did high school work experience at all.
Reflecting young people’s demand for quality, accessible career information and work experience, 1,645 young
people completed Year13’s Virtual Work Experience (VWE) programs while 1,589 completed its Academy elearning courses during National Careers Week.
Year13’s Virtual Work Experience seeks to solve the problems plaguing high school work experience where
students compete for increasingly limited offerings by partnering up with industry-leading industry bodies and
employers including The Australian Defence Force, The Tech Council, Microsoft, CBA, Bakers Delight, NBN, DoE VIC, and Gelato Messina to let students virtually tour their workplaces and complete gamified activities where upon completion they earn a digital certificate for their resume or LinkedIn profile.
“Year13’s Virtual Work Experience content is designed specifically for school-aged children rather than higher ed graduates and is promoted extensively through Year13’s eco-system, including our youth facing platforms and our career transition platform Career Tools, which has over 1200 subscribing high schools. This enables Year13 and partnering industries and employers to reach young people earlier in their career decision making journey, facilitating more informed pathway choices. During Nationals Careers Week we had several thousand young people take part in these offerings, putting us on course to have more than 100,000 young people complete these fun and engaging courses by the end of the year,” said Year13 & Career Tools head of marketing Lillian Gorman.
Year13’s E-Learning Academy program zooms out from the workplace level and covers entire industries and
career paths like tech, accounting, engineering, defence, construction, hospitality and social services, helping
young people understand the skills needed for different industries and enabling them to explore industries that
appeal to them.
In addition to Virtual Work Experience and Academy engagement, 1,399 students activated a career plan using
the Career Copilot feature in Career Tools during National Careers Week.
Career Copilot uses up-to-date career information combined with an AI-powered quiz to start students career
discovery, provide job recommendations based on their skillsets and interests and enabling them to build a
personalised career action plan, providing students with achievable short and long-term objectives that align
with their career preferences.
Year13 co-founder Will Stubley said: “School students are struggling to find work experience opportunities
that align with their interests, with many not able to find one at all. Rural, regional and low SES students are
particularly disadvantaged when it comes to securing work experiences relevant to their interests.
Our data confirms young people spend up to five hours per day online so collaborating with industry and
employers to create quality Virtual Work Experiences for school-aged children is one of Year 13’s priorities. Our Virtual Work Experience platform is mobile-friendly, visual and interactive, which we know appeals to
teenagers, and it’s free for every young person, which is hugely important in terms of providing equitable
access to career education regardless of a young person’s circumstances or where they live”.
“The benefits of youth specific digital career learning and experiences are significant, helping young people at scale to gain critical awareness and knowledge of jobs and workplaces as well as addressing the larger issue of growing skills gaps in vital industries. Year13’s Virtual Work Experience and Industry E-Learning Academies provide Industries and Employers with the opportunity to bring their unique benefits to life in a way that connects authentically with young people early enough in their decision-making journey to influence career and pathway intentions,” said Year13 National Partnerships Director Annie Mulders.
