Welcome to Pathfinder
The First Intelligent Platform for Career Development
What is Pathfinder?
It’s a one-stop-shop for career development and planning that supports you throughout your career trajectory.
Our idea is simple — imagine you could have all the information you need to secure your dream career in just one, organised place. We are talking preparation material and resources, profiles of companies and employers, work opportunities and even some tools to stay organised. Now add a slick design and intelligence, et voilà, that’s what we are building!
It’s like having your own omniscient personal career advisor, except that unlike actual advisors, Pathfinder can:
- be accessed 24/7, from everywhere and by anyone
- keep you up to date with the marketplace
- provides you with unbiased advice on the next steps you should take
These three points are the cornerstones of Pathfinder. We want to demystify how those who are successful got to where they are and empower you to find your purpose.
The problem with career information online and career services
Some organisations have tried to find a way to define roles and careers by gathering high-level information and organising it into digestible categories. Take the Explore Careers service created by the UK National Careers Service, for example, where you can browse through 700 pages that go into “depth” on typical roles available today. Look up “Marketing Manager”, and this is what you get:
- salary range: £25k to £55k
- skills & knowledge required: ability to sell products and services, excellent communication skills, initiative, detail-oriented, leadership, maths knowledge, business management skills, customer service skills, proficiency in software packages
- daily tasks: researching/analysing market trends and target markets, creating marketing strategies, planning/managing the launch of products/services, setting budgets/targets, working agencies to produce campaigns, organising/attending events, managing budgets and campaigns, managing a team of marketing executives
- career path: you could become a regional manager or marketing director. You could also become a brand or account director. Another option is to become a freelance marketing consultant
This is great if you’ve been living under a rock. Let’s be honest, this is just common sense.
Is this the kind of information that would help you decide on a career in marketing or to prepare for it? Highly unlikely.
So what kind of information do you really need? Well, we are building Pathfinder to answer this very question.
Moving away from the generic and onto the actionable
We believe that current services, like Explore Careers and so many others, are not helpful because they are too generic. Career profiles detail what is common knowledge. They don’t explain what you are expected to know to get the role, or where the industry will be in a couple of years when you will be ready to progress.
A career development platform should provide actionable information, but understandably this can’t be accomplished if the content is human-curated. Career advisors can’t possibly know everything or bring you the information you need precisely when you need it. At Pathfinder we chose a different approach, to use AI and Data Science. We find actionable information in real-time tailored to where you are in life, thus helping you to form your opinions about viable career paths as well as prepare for them.
How Pathfinder works
To understand how this all works, let’s go back to the example of a Marketing Manager. We have seen what kind of information you would get on the Explore Career service website. What if you were to use Pathfinder?
First, you can explore marketing as an industry by browsing the latest news, articles and academic papers, publications, and books. We chose these features as they are an effective way to discover what marketing is about, covering the basics and the “hot topics” of the moment. Going through these resources would give you a good idea of the industry and its trends.
Then you can find resources to develop the skills and knowledge required to work in marketing. These include online and in-person courses, workshops, events, conferences, seminars, university degrees and other qualifications. Depending on your goals and needs, you might want to have an overview of what marketing is or to become more knowledgable and skilled to keep up with new technologies and strategies.
Lastly, you can see the companies active in your industry, marketing (which will include related fields like PR, Branding, and so on) along with their overview, news, their social feeds, and even vacancies. You can also browse the open positions available worldwide in marketing — not only regular jobs but also internships, volunteering, apprenticeships, and so on.
The difference between our platform and Explore Career is evident: without using AI and Data Science, Pathfinder wouldn’t be able to bring all this information together in real-time.
I will expand on our features in upcoming articles, going in-depth on how you can use our tools to find the career that suits you best whether you are a student planning for your future or a professional considering changing jobs.
