JobSensei

JobSensei is a mobile game that educates, engages and empowers youth to master the job market. Through its three phases, the game will equip youth for a “four S” journey: Skill, Search, Signal and Screen. Games are the universal language of youth; JobSensei uses this language to talk about youth employment.

Today, there are more young people who are educated, more proficient with technology, and more adaptable than any other generation, yet they face greater difficulties in finding a job.The ILO and World Bank estimate that youth are 3 times more likely to be unemployed than adults.

Even those young people who have pursued a course of study with a specific career in mind often find themselves with skills that are neither relevant nor employable. And, the job search and application process requires a set of skills that aren’t traditionally taught. 

JobSensei is a mobile game that educates, engages and empowers youth to look for job opportunities in a compelling way. The game is designed across three phases, each of which tackles a specific challenge that youth face while looking for and securing jobs. 

Phase 1 – Skill: This phase will help youth gain the essential skills for job hunting and addresses the “knowing how to job-hunt” challenge. In this phase the player will play mini games that will build her skills for job hunting; such as where to look for jobs, how to build a CV or how to ace an interview. 

Phase 2 – Search: Phase 2 challenges the player to play a matching game. Youth will see a map of her city, where they match anonymous youth profiles to job postings, both dummy and real. 

Phase 3 – Signal and Screen: The last phase will have actual local vacancies and gamifies the ‘real’ application process. Youth can play some job-specific mini tests, that combined with their player profile, can signal skills to employers and help them pre-screen.

Youth unemployment is a universal phenomenon, but so it the popularity of digital games. 

Today’s youth are talented, ambitious, tech-savvy, and may be more educated and adaptable than any other generation, yet far too many remain unemployed. Even with the right education and training, youth often are not able to navigate into a job. They may not necessarily know how to search for jobs or signal their skills, or may not understand the labor market or how they stack-up.  Further, many platforms or services meant to assist job-seekers or match them with employers only cater to high-skill or big corporate jobs, which may not be the best fit for entry-level or lower-skilled young applicants.

Finding and securing a job are skills themselves, which young people do not have the chance to gain.  Many youth education-to-employment initiatives are not addressing this last mile problem, or are not well-designed to engage and serve youth at scale. Games have the power of the three “i”s, being interactive, iterative they are able to inspire and reach youth in a way other solutions don’t. Globally, there are 2 billion digital game players, half of whom are under 35 and more than 40% of whom are females. JobSensei will harness the power of games to harness the promise in youth.

JobSensei will assist youth (roughly ages 16-25) to more successfully take the last steps into the world of work. It will help young job seekers navigate the job search and application pathway with skill building, information and resources. While our initial pilot is intended to be conducted in one city (possibly in Pakistan), we know that youth unemployment is a universal issue. We therefore intend to scale-up JobSensei in a context vigilant fashion across several cities in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, understanding the needs of youth, incorporating local resources and translating material as needed. 

Track downloads on iOS and Android platforms - 1000 downloads in pilot city

Monitor partnerships established with employers - 10 employers engaged in phase 2 "Search"

Monitor player attrition rates - 400 youth move from Phase 1 to Phase 2 and 3.

While several organizations have focused on addressing youth employment challenges JobSensei is innovative in three ways. (i) Video games offer a unique platform for a deeper engagement with youth over a long term (ii) Our solution is also cost-effective, as it only requires the one-time cost of foundational core research and game development and can then be adapted to different contexts in a lower cost manner. (iii) JobSensei addresses the the last mile challenge of youth employment in which youth may not be getting support from other programs, erducational institutions or service providers

JobSensei will be adapted for a wide range of smartphones and tablets, from low-end Android phones to high-end iPhones and iPads.

Given that smartphone ownership rates in emerging and developing nations are rising at an extraordinary rate, climbing from a median of 21% in 2013 to 37% in 2015, JobSensei has the potential to reach a vast majority of the increasingly connected global youth. 

We foresee three key channels for sustaining the growth of JobSensei.

• We hope to gather mobilization funds and philanthropic capital for upfront development of JobSensei through competitive grants, innovation competitions and collaborations with governments, development agencies working in the space of youth employment. Crowdraising is also a possibility.
• Through JobSensei we see long-term opportunities for collaboration with the private sector (including employers and employment services companies such as LinkedIn). Since the game can be used to lower the transaction cost of hiring for employers and provide them with a better skilled pool of applicants, we plan to charge a small fee to employers for advertising vacancies through JobSensei.
• In-app purchases and advertisements: Lastly we will leverage the game interface to gather funds for scaling up JobSensei. 

We foresee some risks around our ability to develop and roll-out Phases 2 and 3 at a pace to sustain and grow the player base of Phase 1. The succession from one phase 1 to phase 2 and 3 will require timely deployment of resources to ensure that these subscription-dependent phases are successful. 

Currently in ideation, JobSensei has much to gain from joining and actively engaging with the Solve community.  At the same time, the principals behind JobSensei – Mariam Adil and Nicole Goldin  - together bring over 20 years of experience and expertise with social innovation and impact, serious gaming design for inclusive development, and youth workforce, skills and employment programming.  We are confident that by participating, sharing successes and embracing failures as Solvers, we at JobSensei can both benefit from and contribute to the drive for change and progress.

NRG Advisory

RTI Center for Global Youth Employment