While onboarding new learner and worker users, there are Personas to help users navigate and understand our platform and use the established apps. The Learner / Worker personas are:
- Learner: Post secondary student preparing for a career or job.
- Explorer: Young adult sampling pathways, subjects and skills for personal growth and possible careers.
- Push Job Seeker: Someone actively pursuing job opportunities in a 6 month to 2-year timeframe.
- Pull Job Seeker: Someone willing to accept job opportunities, but not actively pursuing them.
Rationale
The Learner persona represents the process of acquiring skills for job preparation and personal growth. Using the Skills Based Approach apps, a learner tracks their learning laterally across subjects and disciplines and vertically across education and career stages. Constant reskilling and upskilling are lifelong requirements. The Skills Based Approach Methodology is a process to track skills and stack credentials.
The Explorer persona represents a young adult who is looking to identify core competencies, interests and passions. The Skills Based Approach app provides an interface to identify and discover skills. The use of Instances allows for pivots along pathways, activities or experiences daily, weekly, monthly or semesters. An advantage in using the medium of skills and Skills Based Approach is the ability to keep moving forward and piecing together the Instances.
For the difference between learner and explorer, I reference the attitudes of college students. Learners tend to focus on specific career trajectories and preparing for related jobs. Explorers tend to focus on social experiences and finding themselves.
The Push Job Seeker is the traditional job candidate applying for jobs with some pressure of earning an income. In addition to pushing the job credentials stacked in the Skills Based Approach app, Job Futures is an app and process to prepare and later apply to jobs 6 months to 2 years in the future. A goal is to build awareness of Job Futures and import them into Skills Based Approach.
The Pull Job Seeker is someone not encumbered to get a job immediately, but willing to entertain opportunities or offers. There are ways to use the Job Futures platform to pull employers to potential candidates.
For the difference between push and pull job seekers, I like to use the analogy of fishing. A push seeker casts and reels. With maybe a few hundred casts a day, with some effective maneuvering and luck, there are a few offers. A pull seeker casts a few times with a float, waiting for a big offer.
When you signup for a new account, you choose a persona and the interface is tuned for that persona.
There are also Personas for Practitioners.