Use of the "Future Life Map" exercise to improve awareness of career options and opportunities in underrepresented minority undergraduate students pursuing STEM careers.

OBJECTIVES: There has long existed significant underrepresentation of minority students in STEM training and careers. Ongoing efforts to improve opportunities and participation for underrepresented minority students have focused on multiple areas, from increased funding to early exposure to research in STEM. We developed the novel Future Life Map career planning exercise with the goal of contributing to this multi-faceted approach. The exercise emphasizes on the consideration of multiple potential career destinations and routes to those destination. The exercise was designed with the goal of improving participant awareness of options and career planning self-efficacy to improve success and retention of underrepresented minority student participation and retention in STEM. METHODS: We implemented the Future Life Map exercise with 2 separate groups of under-represented minority undergraduate students pursuing careers in STEM. Participants then completed an anonymous survey to evaluate the exercise and describe the value they derived from completing the Future Life Map. RESULTS: The exercise presentation and its supporting documents were highly rated by participants with >81% of respondents rating it as "very informative" (4 or 5 on a 5-point Likert Scale). Participants reported that they were very likely to recommend the exercise to others (25 of 27 participants) and were likely to repeat the activity for their own future decision making (22 participants). Themes that emerged from participant reporting of the value of the exercise were: increased awareness of career and training options, improved understanding of the research required to make informed career/life decisions, and new awareness of specific information about career options under consideration. CONCLUSION: The Future Life Map exercise was successful in improving participant awareness of career options, career planning ability, and helped participants to feel more empowered. This is likely of particular benefit for improving participation and retention of under-represented minority students pursuing careers in STEM.

Skill-driven recommendations for job transition pathways.

Job security can never be taken for granted, especially in times of rapid, widespread and unexpected social and economic change. These changes can force workers to transition to new jobs. This may be because new technologies emerge or production is moved abroad. Perhaps it is a global crisis, such as COVID-19, which shutters industries and displaces labor en masse. Regardless of the impetus, people are faced with the challenge of moving between jobs to find new work. Successful transitions typically occur when workers leverage their existing skills in the new occupation. Here, we propose a novel method to measure the similarity between occupations using their underlying skills. We then build a recommender system for identifying optimal transition pathways between occupations using job advertisements (ads) data and a longitudinal household survey. Our results show that not only can we accurately predict occupational transitions (Accuracy = 76%), but we account for the asymmetric difficulties of moving between jobs (it is easier to move in one direction than the other). We also build an early warning indicator for new technology adoption (showcasing Artificial Intelligence), a major driver of rising job transitions. By using real-time data, our systems can respond to labor demand shifts as they occur (such as those caused by COVID-19). They can be leveraged by policy-makers, educators, and job seekers who are forced to confront the often distressing challenges of finding new jobs.