Overview
Partner Organisation: A pan-India education NGO working with first-generation college learners (name withheld at partner's request) Programme: Dheya-NGO Career Assessment and Mentoring Partnership Cohort Size: 2,400 students across 6 states States Covered: Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh Duration: April 2024 to March 2025 Primary Outcome: Career clarity scores improved from 28/100 (baseline) to 67/100 (post-programme); 84% of students developed a written career action plan
The Context: A Specific Kind of Disadvantage
There is a form of career disadvantage that is rarely discussed in India's education conversation, because it is invisible to people who do not have it.
When a student from a professional family considers careers, they have access to a network of lived examples. Their parents, uncles, aunts, neighbours — these are people who have navigated educational systems, entry requirements, salary negotiations, and career transitions. The student may not know everything, but they know that these things are knowable, and they know people who can help them figure it out.
First-generation college learners have none of this. Their parents are educated enough to know that college matters; they may not be able to explain the difference between a BCA and a B.Sc. Computer Science, between a government job and a corporate job, between an MBA from a Tier-1 institution and a distance-learning MBA. The information asymmetry is not about intelligence or aspiration — it is about network.
The NGO partner had been working with first-generation learners for eleven years. They had observed that students who made it to college — often against significant family and financial pressure — were routinely making poor career decisions, not because they lacked ability but because they lacked the information and frameworks to make good ones.
Their specific brief to Dheya: "We need to close the information gap without requiring students to have the same network as urban middle-class peers. The solution has to be scalable, has to work in Hindi and regional languages, and has to be appropriate for students who have never encountered psychometric assessment before."
The Design Constraint: Scale Without Sacrifice
The programme needed to reach 2,400 students spread across 6 states, many in semi-urban and rural locations with unreliable internet connectivity. The conventional Dheya programme — which assumes consistent internet access, moderate digital literacy, and a background understanding of career planning concepts — needed significant adaptation.
Three design adaptations were made before the programme launched.
Adaptation 1: RAPD-Lite for Accessibility
The standard RAPD assessment was compressed into a 28-item version (down from 78 items) that retained the four-dimension structure but removed items that required familiarity with corporate workplace contexts. Scenarios were rewritten to reflect environments recognisable to semi-urban and rural young people — a panchayat meeting, a local hospital, a cooperative society, a school — rather than the office-based scenarios in the standard instrument.
Validation testing with 180 pilot students confirmed that the RAPD-Lite produced orientation profiles consistent with the full instrument in approximately 87% of cases. The remaining 13% of profiles showed slight category shifts, predominantly between adjacent dimensions (Analytical-Practical or Relational-Directive), which the programme team judged acceptable for the purpose of career guidance, though not for research applications requiring precise psychometric data.
The assessment was made available in four languages: Hindi, Odia, Bhojpuri (for Bihar and eastern UP), and Rajasthani (a simplified Hindi variant for Rajasthan cohorts). Translation was done by the NGO's regional staff with Dheya's psychometric team reviewing for construct equivalence.
Adaptation 2: Offline-First Delivery
The assessment and core career information modules were packaged for offline use. Students could complete the assessment on a tablet or smartphone without internet connectivity; data synced when connectivity was available. This addressed the infrastructure reality of semi-rural college campuses in these states, where connectivity is inconsistent even when technically available.
Printed career reference guides — a condensed version of Dheya's career mapping content, covering 40 occupational categories relevant to first-generation learners — were produced in Hindi and distributed to all 2,400 students. These guides were designed to be retained as reference documents, not consumed in a single session.
Adaptation 3: Counsellor Certification for NGO Frontline Staff
The NGO employed 64 field staff (called Academic Mentors) who were the primary point of contact for students in each location. These staff had backgrounds in education, social work, and community development — not career counselling.
Dheya designed and delivered a two-day Career Guidance Certification for NGO Field Staff, covering:
- Interpreting RAPD-Lite profiles in plain language
- Facilitating career exploration conversations using the printed guides
- Recognising students who needed individual follow-up (versus those who could proceed with group resources)
- Handling common parent objections to non-traditional career paths
Post-training competency assessments found that 58 of 64 field staff achieved the minimum competency threshold; the remaining six were provided additional coaching and retested successfully.
Programme Implementation: Month by Month
April–May 2024: Assessment and Baseline
RAPD-Lite assessments were administered to all 2,400 students through the NGO's field network. A baseline career clarity survey (measuring seven dimensions: self-knowledge, career knowledge, decision confidence, awareness of entry paths, awareness of salary ranges, family-alignment, and goal specificity) was administered alongside the assessment.
Baseline average career clarity score: 28 out of 100. The lowest-scoring dimensions were goal specificity (average 18/100) and awareness of entry paths (average 21/100). The highest was aspiration (average 61/100) — these students wanted things; they did not know how to get them.
June–September 2024: Group Career Exploration Sessions
NGO field staff facilitated structured group sessions (8–12 students per group) using the RAPD-Lite profiles and printed career guides. Each student attended four sessions over the four-month period.
Session themes:
- Understanding your RAPD profile — what your orientations mean
- Exploring careers that match your profile — with real entry-path information
- Understanding the Indian job market — sectors, salary ranges, what employers look for
- Identifying your next step — one concrete action before the next session
October–December 2024: Individual Mentoring for Flagged Students
Field staff identified 340 students (approximately 14% of the cohort) who required individual attention beyond group sessions — students with family pressure conflicts, students with aspirations requiring information beyond the printed guides, and students showing signs of disengagement from the programme.
These 340 students were enrolled in Dheya's online mentoring platform for one-on-one sessions with Dheya-certified mentors. Sessions were conducted over video call, with accommodations for students who preferred audio-only due to data constraints.
January–March 2025: Action Planning and Follow-Up
Each student was supported in developing a written one-page career action plan covering: target career area, required qualifications, next three steps (exam preparation, course enrolment, skill building, or job application depending on their stage), and one mentor or resource person they had identified as support.
What the Data Showed
Career Clarity Score Improvement
Post-programme career clarity assessment showed an average score of 67/100 — an increase of 39 points from the baseline of 28/100.
Sub-dimension improvements:
- Goal specificity: from 18 to 61 (+43 points)
- Awareness of entry paths: from 21 to 72 (+51 points)
- Decision confidence: from 29 to 64 (+35 points)
- Family alignment: from 44 to 58 (+14 points — the smallest but significant improvement)
The family alignment dimension showed the smallest improvement, which is consistent with the programme's scope: individual career clarity can be built in months; family dynamics around career expectations take longer to shift, and the programme made no claim to resolve them.
Action Plan Completion
84% of students (2,016 of 2,400) completed a written career action plan before the programme concluded. This is the metric the NGO values most, because it is the one most predictive of whether the programme's impact persists after formal engagement ends.
Students with written plans have a reference point they can return to. Students without plans tend to revert to the default — which, for first-generation learners, often means following the path of least resistance rather than the path of best fit.
Occupational Diversity of Plans
One of the concerns the NGO had expressed before the programme was that career assessment for this population would simply funnel students toward conventional "good jobs" — government service, teaching, medical auxiliaries — and not expand their awareness of the full range of available paths.
The action plans showed a significantly wider occupational distribution than the NGO had seen from unassisted cohorts:
- 18% were targeting government sector roles (expected)
- 14% were targeting healthcare and paramedical roles
- 12% were targeting technology and digital roles (notably higher than expected)
- 11% were targeting financial services (banking, insurance, microfinance)
- 9% were targeting entrepreneurship or self-employment
- 7% were targeting creative industries (content, media, design)
- The remaining 29% spread across agriculture-adjacent, NGO, education, and other sectors
The technology and digital share was particularly notable. Several field staff reported that the occupational information sessions had introduced students to digital economy roles — content creation, digital marketing, data entry, app development — that they had not previously known were accessible to them without metropolitan relocation.
Voices from the Cohort
Three student experiences, shared with permission (names and identifying details changed at NGO's request):
Priya, 19, Jharkhand: "In my family, 'career' meant a government job or a teacher. My RAPD result showed I was very high Directive, very high Relational. My mentor explained that this is often a good fit for management roles, NGO leadership, or government administration — but the path to administration is different from the path to a teaching job. Before this programme, I didn't know that distinction existed."
Amit, 21, Bihar: "My RAPD was mostly Practical. I thought that meant I was only suited for technical work. My counsellor showed me that people with my profile often do well in healthcare — not as doctors, because that requires a different kind of academic track, but as hospital administrators, medical device technicians, lab technicians. I am now studying for my B.Sc. MLT. I would never have found this option without the programme."
Sunita, 20, Rajasthan: "The hardest part was explaining to my father that I didn't want to be a teacher. He thought I was being ungrateful. The counsellor helped me explain my reasons in a way my father could respect — using the RAPD profile as evidence, showing him what I was good at and what kinds of work those strengths lead to. He still would have preferred teaching, but he accepted my choice. I am applying for positions in a microfinance company."
Lessons for Scale
The programme produced two findings that Dheya considers broadly applicable to career guidance at scale in India.
Frontline staff, trained well, can deliver meaningful career guidance. The 64 NGO field staff were not career counsellors by training. After two days of structured certification, they were capable of facilitating career exploration conversations that produced measurable improvement in student clarity. The leverage point is not the number of dedicated counsellors; it is the quality of training provided to people who are already in contact with students.
Printed, retained reference materials matter. In a digital programme environment, there is pressure to deliver everything through screens. In low-connectivity environments with students who have no home printing access, a high-quality printed career guide that students can mark up, share with family, and refer back to over months is more valuable than an online portal they may not be able to access consistently. The programme's printed guides were, according to field staff feedback, the most referred-to resource in the entire programme.
Dheya partners with education NGOs, foundations, and CSR programmes to deliver career guidance at scale. For information about NGO and social impact partnerships, contact our institutional team or visit /for-institutions.