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Introduction to Careerpilot and the Pathway Planner Tool

What is Careerpilot?

What is Careerpilot?

Careerpilot is an award-winning (CDI2018), one-stop careers website for students, parents, teachers and career advisers, designed by qualified career advisers and teachers. 

The careers platform includes the Student Zone, Parent Zone, Adviser Zone and Reporting Zone, as well as the Pathway Planner - a triage tool to assess the guidance needs of Y10+.

Careerpilot Student Zone

Careerpilot can be used by students aged 11-19 in schools and colleges. The site helps students develop career skills so students can manage their career decisions as they go through life. We do this through showing students the three-stages they can always follow whenever they make a career decision.

  1. Start with you
  2. Explore your options
  3. Plan your next step

The site includes tools and activities students can use at every stage of this process, as well as information and advice on all progression pathways. 

  • In 'Start with you' students can complete quizzes to help explore their personal motivations - subjects they love, values, personality types, and skills.  
  • In 'Explore your options' students can explore choices by age or through information on 51 job sectors/900+ job profiles (which include national and regional Labour Market Information), through using course and apprenticeship vacancy search tools or by viewing video stories (more than 1000 in the site).
  • In 'Plan your next step' students can access their full Career Tools report, their Skills Profile (mapped to Skills Builder) and also use a simple action planner.

Students can create an account on Careerpilot, which they own until they are 20, and then use their Career Tools to personalise their choices, save quiz results and build their report - which moves up annually and can be 'ported' to another provider. If your school is in the funded area or is a subscriber, students will be able to add themselves to your school or college at registration (your provider's name will be added to the drop-down list) and all the data they generate as they build their Career Tools report will be available for you to view in the Reporting Zone. 

Parent Zone:

Parents have access to the Careerpilot Parent Zone - which has answers to questions parents are frequently asking with advice and additional useful links so they feel informed and able to support their young person.

Subscribers can offer their parents access to live webinars delivered by the Careerpilot Team.

Adviser Zone:

Subscribers have access to all the amazing resources in the Adviser Zone e.g. five career lessons for every year group, Hot Job LMI posters and activities, etc.

Reporting Zone:

When you have set up an admin password you can access data reports showing the job sectors/jobs your students are interested in, their skills, values, subjects they love, course choices, etc.  - in the Reporting Zone. To get the best data in the reports, your students will need to have registered/be signed in and be 'tagging' the things they are interested in - these will be saved for them in their Career Tools report and be collated as group and individual reports for you to see.

If you are using the Pathway Planner triage tool you will access all results, data reports and tracking tools through the Reporting Zone.

What is the Pathway Planner?

The Careerpilot Pathway Planner is a model and online tool, which assess the career guidance needs of year 10+ students to help schools/colleges provide effective, efficient and targeted personal guidance to meet the individual needs of young people, using triage and a whole-school, integrated approach.

The Pathway Planner helps careers leaders/SLT use data to identify the guidance needs of students – at three levels, saving staff time and ensuring students receive the guidance they need. 

Find out more about the Pathway Planner tool here.

Meeting the Gatsby Benchmarks:

Careerpilot supports schools and colleges in achieving the Gatsby Benchmarks and maps to Gatsby can be found here.

Building Essential Skills

As a partner of the Skills Builder Partnership, Careerpilot makes reference to eight essential skills that students need to build to prepare them for the world of work, whatever job they choose to do.

You will see the skills referenced as part of the Careerpilot Skills Profile as well as on our dedicated skills page, with links to the Skills Builder Framework which breaks these skills down into individual steps to support progression. We have also been accredited with Skills Builder Level 3 Impact award in recognition of supporting students to practice their skills as part of our careers lessons.

View a video introduction to Careerpilot

View a short (less than 10 mins) or longer video (20 min) introduction and overview of Careerpilot and Pathway Planner here.

Sign up for a free live Introduction to Careerpilot webinar


We offer free webinars to introduce Careerpilot and the Pathway Planner to new schools/colleges or to staff that are new to Careerpilot, and also a programme of ongoing training including a refresher on using the Reporting Zone or Pathway Planner. Join one of the Careerpilot team for a live overview of the site and ask any questions you may have about making use of the tools and resources and about setting up access.

Book your place here.

How to tell students and parents about Careerpilot


Click here to download an email template, flyer and videos to share with your school community to help them to find out more about how to get started with using Careerpilot and the Parent Zone.

You may also wish to add a logo and link to careerpilot.org.uk from the careers page on your school or college website. 

Find out more about how to subscribe or set up full admin Careerpilot access for your school or college here.