Choice Should Be a Skill, Not an Exam (The Voice of One of Our NGFP-Young Voice Participant)
It is always nice to hear from our youth and learn about what they are working on in their part of the world. As the Voice of One of Our NGFP-Young Voices Participants, we are delighted and privileged to learn a bit about her project, ProVerse:
Choice Should Be a Skill, Not an Exam
By Maria Chernushevich, ProfVerse
When I was conducting a sociology research project for school, I asked my peers a simple question: do you trust career-guidance tests? Not a single person answered "yes."
I couldn't let it go. The teenagers around me were choosing their professions by three markers: expected income, their parents' opinion, and the stereotype of prestige. Meanwhile, about 60% of young people face difficulties in the labor market precisely because of a mistaken first choice, and up to 44% of skills, according to forecasts, will become obsolete within five years. And the tests that schools offer ask for the "right" answer instead of showing the profession: my respondents answered not what they thought, but what was expected of them.
The numbers confirmed what I had felt intuitively: the problem is not in teenagers, but in the tool.
I was standing at a crossroads myself back then: applications, programs, dozens of "what will you become?" And I saw how all of us were making these decisions blindly. That's when I understood: the problem is not that teenagers don't want to choose. The problem is that they have nowhere to try on a choice safely.
That's how ProfVerse was born — a platform where, instead of tests, a person lives through a scripted workday of a real profession: with real tasks, constraints, and the consequences of their decisions. I formulated four rules for it: personalization instead of average answers, practice instead of descriptions, transparency instead of a "black box," and care for well-being instead of game hooks.
Over the past months I have been building ProfVerse on my own, with volunteers. I validated demand through content — career-guidance videos and breakdowns across social networks.
The main achievement of these months is the ProfVerse prototype. The first version of the platform is already working: the site hosts the first scenarios, where a person receives a role, real-life briefs, and sees the consequences of their decisions. The scenarios cannot simply be read — they can be lived through, and the first users are already completing the cases and coming back with feedback.
The loudest test was a career-guidance marathon we ran together with the Kyrgyz project "I CAN" for 150+ teenagers from disadvantaged families. Thanks to participant feedback, ProfVerse became even more personalized. In parallel, I am negotiating collaborations with various educational institutions and projects.
I am building this without a permanent team or a budget — and that, perhaps, is what I am most proud of.
On my own, however, I can bring an idea to a prototype but not to a product for thousands, so I am actively looking for a team. Next — scaling, marathons in new cities, partners, and the launch of a platform where every teenager can try on a profession before it defines their life.
Choice should not be an exam you cannot prepare for. It should be a skill you can try on.
