Life Skills VR: Life Skills for Employment in COVID-19 Era through VR Innovation

The disruptive effects of the COVID-19 outbreak have impacted almost all sectors of our society. Tertiary education is no exception. In a study by Aucejo et al (2020) about 1500 students reported that the outbreak had large negative effects on students' current labour market participation and expectations about post-college labour outcomes. All issues related to pandemics have increased stress and anxiety leading to mental health among the young generation which has less experience of coping with stress. That is why is important to help them realise their strengths, develop missing skills and boost their confidence which will ultimately help in avoiding mental health-related issues by combining the VR technology and John Holland’s personality criteria known as RIASEC – according to which people and work environments can be classified according to six basic types: Doers (Realistic), Thinkers (Investigative), Creators (Artistic), Helpers (Social), Persuaders (Enterprising) or Organizers (Conventional).  RIASEC provides young people an opportunity to understand what areas they are inclined to succeed. The application of the RIASEC is combined with the development of key skills (Ziarati, 2020) which gives job applicants a greater chance of finding and keeping a job such as i) developing and managing self, ii) working as a member of a team, iii) communicating effectively, iv) maintaining physical and mental fitness, v) applying technology, vi) managing time, vii) defining and solving problems and viii) design skills.   Thus, the proposed project intends to take full advantage of VR both as a tool to identify interest and strength, to develop key life skills required by the labour market and understand in which occupation they can excel and have a bright future. With a set of well-thought tests, the proposed app will allow users to take part in carefully organised quizzes that they will experience for themselves without getting bored or finding it dreadfully dull. Moreover, this project will allow users to know the missing skills and able them to focus on the important aspects by themselves and therefore able them to eliminate skills mismatching and develop key skills. Also, by knowing their strong points Generation C will be able to develop themselves to higher levels in seeking and retaining good and well-paid jobs.