WhatIsMyGoal

Problem: Students aren't able to choose the right career due to a lack of exposure, right suppport and facilities. 

Solution : 1) A platform to give deep understanding of the potential career opportunities in 6 different ways. 2) Map the natural traits, aptitude, interests and others of the student to the average values of people holding such careers. And also consider the progression of traits of students over a time period rather than from a single test or observation.

Impact: Students will choose the right career choices, lead a happier work-life thereby enhancing productivity. There will be less depressed work force and more motivated companies.

Problem: Helping the students choose the right career choices. 

Factors contributing: The present system of choosing careers if flawed due to two reasons:

1) If a student pursues what she/he "wants" - this choice is out of the exposure they got till date, a better choice should have been chosen if rightly exposed to all potential careers.

2) If a counsellor/someone helps - age between 10 to 20 is where traits are being established and everything varies rapidly. A single test or observation for sometime cannot define aptitude, interests or other factors. We need to consider the progression of these traits over time to come to a conclusion. Presently this is not considered.

How many: More than 90% of students across the globe are affected which in turn affects their work-life and productivity in future.

In India 90% of students know 7 career options out of 200!! 

80% workforce in India are looking for job change, 60% are unhappy with their present roles.

Solution: Expose the students to potential career choices. Collect relevant data about the student for atleast 2 years to match them to right career choices according to the requirements of that career.

1) Exposure: A 2 year curriculum where one career choice is deeply understood by student in 6 steps : Movie, an article, an explanatory video, a goal leader discussion, peer debate and tasks realted to it.

2) Matching : Aptitude, natural traits like "handling failure,workpressure, anger" , interests and other data about students are gathered from 9 different sources to understand them better. Now based on progression of each trait we match the students to career choices. We suggest those careers that fit, that suit and that she/he would enjoy.

We use the website, app for the above data collection, exposure and interaction.

Students of age 10 to 20 are the target population in developing and developed countries. 
Due to lack of exposure to careers, benefits due to their demographics, restrictions of their category and others they aren't able to chooose the right careers. Moreover the persons/counsellors who help these children to select a goal are considering data from a test or basic observation which is completely not right because everything about a student of this age varies and only continuous observation over a period of time has to be considered.

The only way to understand the interests and needs of the student is constant observation from various relevant sources. We have data input from various tasks on the app, tests, inputs from family and friend, and other sources to understand students better. We have a reward system for students to enhance the engagement and interest.

Once the two year program is done, with all the information we gathered about the student we give them a pool of careers that would 1)fit 2)suit adn 3) she/he can enjoy. The student will have the best options to choose from and shift if requried.

Exploration of career choices is a major part in the challenge. The students targeted are in early stages of education.

WhatIsMyGoal focus area is career exploration and matching the students to careers. The target population is the students in early education.

Prototype: The idea is standardized and a solution roadmap is made. 

We build a website to host the 2-year curriculum. The users will be interacting with the website for all the stages : Exposure, data collection, updates and rest. Imrpovements will be done on the go based on user feedback.

The next step in the prototype development is the mobile app to ease the process. But the app development isn't important as per the business model as all the process will be done through website , app is intended to ease the process a bit. Based on the initial user trails and feedback, we shall start app development at a later stage.

Content development is a continuous process, we have built the content for a few courses which is enough to onboard a few early adopters, we shall continue course development(career choices) over time.

The traits of a student between 10 to 20 years vary rapidly as this is the time for hormonal changes and learning.

So to understand abilities ,interests or anything we need to identify the progress of an individual trait over a period of time rather than through a test. So analytical capability or ability to handle failure has to be marked/valued only after taking relevant data over certain time intervals.

Today the above is not taken into consideration, a psychometric test and a few discussions are made to understand a student and help them choose  a career. Moreover the "interests" of the student is highly dependant on the amount of exposure they got. 

WhatIsMyGoal is going to make a huge change in the industry, goal-guidance will be taken seriously and data collection will become huge part of goal fixing. A new market will be created.

After this market will get right & motivated candidates, happier work force , higher productivity and lower attrition.

Presently : 5

1 st year in operation :  10000

5 years in operation : 1 million

Qualitative indicators : The students having more clarity about career choices, their active participation in the tasks for each goal, their reluctance to not particapate in things that they might not do in future since they about themselves - all these are tracked on the app and website.

Quantitative: Number of students particpate and complete the 2 year course.

Future: The percentage of happy work-force due to selecting the right career choices. The freedom of people to choose alternate careers with ease.

 Full time - 

Vignan Joseph K, CEO

IIIT, Software engineer, 2nd startup

Part-time -

Mentor and chief contributors:

Data science: Ramesh, ISB

Operations : Commander Vikas, IIM, Army

CEO: Software Engineer, 2nd startup. I have been working on the idea for a very long time right after my 10th standard!! 

I wanted to become a cricketer and NOT!!

This big conundrum I have seen in many with lack of information and excess of information. At this juncture when there is a huge influx of companies bombarding students about individual careers there is huge need to help them decide a career first.

Analytics mentor: Ramesh, data scientist, ISB. He was with the founder during the ideation phases a few years back. Now joined back to mentor the founder in the sphere.

Operations mentor : Commander Vikas, Army, country head operations of Stanplus(biggest ambulance service in India). He has been an good supporter of education and this particular cause.

We have specific rules to hold half of the CXO roles for women. CEO is a male and we are scouting for female CMO and COO to start with. We give equal importance to eligibility and the inclusion in here. 

The leadership team is planned to have people representing different backgrounds and cultures to ensure our work is suitable & focused towards all the communities.

Priority 1: The network of mentors, like-minded entrepreneur

Priority 2 : PR and10k USD

Priority 3 : Sales support / local connections.

Branding is very imporant for our startups since we need to almost create a new market out of the biggest available market for it. We need to educate the users about the need for such a product and then start broadcasting our name. More the exposure , the better it is for us.

Sales is a part we would love to take help in, especially connections out of India. 

MIT faculty can help us design the model better to match our requirements. We would like to make the best use of the data of students and careers to help them take the right career choices.

Solve team can help us reach to countries and territories through the Solver community and train us to make the best use of it.

The complete solution is focused on helping students explore careers, understand themselves, experiment with options, and create a pool of positive career choices. The output of our two-year program is a report of suitable careers, and the journey all along is the exploration.

We shall use the prize to further understand the careers better with more data, include more features to engage the students the better and involve nativity into the application.

Choosing suitable careers will make lives easier for women and girls. There are many career choices which girls are hesitant to try or unaware of the existence. Our program breaks these barriers for girls in the early stages. 

Moreover, the benefits of girls/women for a particular career is exclusively considered and mentioned over time. This improves girls to try out career options, utilize the opportunities available.

There are many women suitable for leadership roles in male-dominated careers , it is staying so only because of lower participation of women in those fields. We will bring a change here.

We are using machine learning to best utilize data of the student and of the career choices available to match the students to best suitable career choices. 

This will ensure a safer,happier work-life; freedom, and flexibility of career choices all around the life. This will enhance productivity of the work force and happiness index.

We shall use the prize to further understand the careers better with more data, include more features to engage the students the better and involve nativity into the application.