AI career assessments: Can algorithms understand a student’s potential beyond their grades?

By Abhishek Gupta, founder & CEO, Gide.Ai

What were your marks? That’s usually where career advice begins. A high score, and the talk turns to engineering or medicine almost at once. An average one, and the student often leaves feeling the choices have been narrowed for them. But a report card tells only how exams went. It misses important insights: what the student enjoys, where their strengths lie, and what they hope to become; none of that is visible on it.

Selection Dilemma: Which way to go?
Take two students. The first can’t leave a hard problem alone, which could lead to research, a business of their own, or a career in technology. The second talks easily, reads people well, and explains things clearly, so marketing, psychology or management might suit better. Exam results won’t necessarily reveal either. And a lot of students simply don’t know what they want. Marks clearly aren’t settling the question for them. They need to understand themselves better, and they need to see what’s actually available. AI-powered career assessments are one attempt to help.

The problem is not just uncertainty. Students can also have a narrow view of the opportunities available. The OECD’s 2025 report, The State of Global Teenage Career Preparation, found that 50% of girls and 44% of boys across OECD countries expected to work in just ten occupations. It suggests that many young people may be overlooking careers beyond a familiar set of choices.

Choosing Careers: Looking Beyond Marks
However, this does not mean grades have no value. Grades reflect a student’s progress through education and, in many cases, determine which courses and colleges the student can attend. However, one does not know much about students’ preferences and abilities. At this point, AI-based career evaluation systems come into play. They combine different tests related to aptitudes, interests, and skills.

Based on a student’s answers, they suggest careers the student may never have considered and explain why a particular strength might fit a particular profession. Someone interested in technology might find that product design or user experience deserves a look next to software development. A student fascinated by business and by why people behave as they do could end up considering marketing, entrepreneurship or organisational psychology. The goal isn’t to hand students a new number to replace the old one. It’s to show them more possibilities.

Career Discovery: From Imagination to Proper Planning
Finding the right career sounds easy. However, what is difficult is actually recognising the one. What does it involve day-to-day? Which subjects are required? What qualifications will you need? Students have to answer these before the idea becomes a plan. Many get stuck at this point. According to a survey conducted in 2025 by the OECD, about 39% of fifteen-year-olds residing in 38 countries do not know what career they are going to pursue. It also showed that 21% of children in OECD countries would work in jobs requiring a higher education, but do not plan on getting one.

Personalised digital assessments can help address this. By linking interests to academic pathways, courses and universities, they give students something concrete to work from. Say a student likes environmental science. They could look into sustainability, climate research or environmental engineering, then move on to degree programmes, subject requirements and ways to gain relevant experience. Classes 9 to 12 are when this matters most. Subject choices, entrance exams and higher education plans all start taking shape then, and an early start means students can explore without a deadline looming over them.

Building Profiles: Exploring Beyond Classrooms
Choosing a course is not everything. Students should be provided with opportunities to pursue their interests and demonstrate their skills. This could be done through projects, contests, internships, research, accreditation programs, and various other endeavours where students will be able to demonstrate their skills and evaluate themselves. These may even enhance their university admission profiles for universities that judge students more than their academic records.

There is a gap here, too. OECD’s 2025 Report on this matter has uncovered several interesting pieces of information: less than 50% of students from the OECD nations had any interaction with employers at the age of 15, without even visiting employers’ premises, participating in job fairs, or having experience in internships. AI-based counseling will allow students to discover activities that are in line with their goals.

This is far better than collecting certificates just to add them to your résumé. The time can rather be utilized to gain some practical experience of the career ahead. An assessment is pointless if it does not result in any action. A report listing someone’s strengths isn’t much use if they finish the process still unsure what to do next.

Conclusion: Making Better Choices
AI can’t predict who a student will become, and it shouldn’t try. Instead, its role is to match up the students’ abilities, strengths and inclinations to different careers, educational paths, and opportunities for gaining experience.

The result is personalized career guidance with counseling. Marks will keep mattering. They just shouldn’t mark the edge of a student’s future. A good assessment helps young people look past what they’ve achieved so far and consider what they could achieve with the right direction, effort and opportunities. Good guidance doesn’t tell students what to become. It helps them make an informed choice about what they want to become.