Launch of the Hello Charly Chatbot – middle/high school – digital & careers guidance

The influence of the digital revolution is being felt in all sectors, professions and associated skills. The shortage of men and women with expertise in the digital sector is a fact, not only for software publishers and digital services companies, but for the economy as a whole. And yet, even in a complex post-Covid-19 environment, job prospects are optimistic.
Too few secondary school students are considering taking up training to enter these professions. After analyzing the reasons for this lack of awareness, Talents du Numérique, Syntec Numérique and Atlas, through its Concepteurs d’Avenirs brand, decided to strengthen the information available on the Internet for young people and their prescribers (parents and teachers). They have deployed a guidance tool, called CHARLY, developed by the start-up Hello Charly, to provide information on training and careers in the digital sector, with the support of Onisep, which is helping to promote job-creating sectors.

Students, parents, teachers unfamiliar with the digital sector

The representations of the young people questioned about the Digital sector, its training courses and its professions are positive overall, even if a certain lack of knowledge remains as to the realitý of the content of the professions and the routes to access them. This situation is also found for the main prescribers, parents and teachers. Two-thirds of middle/high school teachers feel they are not sufficiently trained and informed to contribute effectively to guiding students towards Digital professions, 43%* of parents are in the same situation.

Furthermore, 62% of high school students use the Internet as their main source of guidance information. This phenomenon is accentuated by the fact that 86% of middle and high school teachers encourage their students to look for guidance information on the Internet.

Discover digital professions and training with CHARLY

In response to these findings, CHARLY, a 100% responsive chatbot-type digital device, has been designed as a tool to help raise awareness and make decisions about career guidance. It uses the language of young people, adopts a playful tone and is benevolent. Its aim is to provide targeted and precise information on the Digital sector, and in particular to answer these 3 major questions:

• “I’ve got a digital career in mind: what type of training should I choose? What specializations do I need to get there?
• “I have an idea for a post-bac Digital training course: which speciality(ies) should I choose?” ;
• “I’ve chosen a career path or specialization: what Digital training course(s) can I access? For which profession(s)?”

CHARLY is not intended to prescribe, but to give a general opinion, not specific to very different personal situations. In addition, this tool is also an opportunity to revisit preconceived ideas about the digital world and stereotypes – particularly concerning gender diversity and the role of mathematics. There isn’t just one path, but many paths to the Digital professions and training courses. The same applies to qualifications. So, all types of high school students (artistic, literary, scientific, social sciences, management, etc.) can build a future in the Digital sector.

In view of the information available and future developments in the sector, this tool will be updated regularly.
CHARLY can be accessed on the Concepteurs d’Avenirs (Discover Digital Professions, Working in the Digital Sector, Which career path to choose?) and Talents du Numérique (in particular on the sections “Training in the digital sector” and “Professions for all”) websites.

CHARLY will also be featured in a project run by Onisep and Talents du Numérique. An online kit, consisting of teaching sequences, will enable educational teams to work with their students on discovering training and careers in the Digital sector. The kit will be officially launched in early 2021.