Article Open Access

A Web-Based Interactive Guidance Application for Guiding Vocational Students to Access the Labor Market: An Expert-Based Evaluation

Imam Mahir, Soenarto Soenarto, Slamet Slamet, Thomas Köhler

Abstract


Unemployment remains a global challenge, particularly among vocational school graduates who are expected to have job-ready skills yet continue to record the highest unemployment rates. This study evaluates a web-based interactive vocational guidance application designed to integrate student career portfolios, vocational guidance and counseling, industry job opportunities, and labor market access within a school based digital ecosystem. The study addresses a persistent gap in vocational education: career guidance, student records, and employment services are often managed separately, limiting the continuity between students' demonstrated competencies and current industry requirements. The application was developed through planning, development, preliminary testing, field testing, and finalization, followed by expert and user evaluation. Four experts and seven vocational practitioners reviewed the prototype, while 100 students from a public vocational high school in Jakarta participated in the operational test. A 19-item, five-point Likert questionnaire assessed usability, correctness, and portability. The analysis is descriptive, using aspect means and a predefined qualitative conversion scale. Expert ratings produced overall means of 4.83 for content and 4.74 for media, while student ratings produced an overall mean of 4.26. The application's distinctive contribution is the integration of school verified student profiles, counselor-mediated guidance, industry vacancy, internship, or training information, and direct opportunity matching in a vocational school centered workflow. The findings indicate that the prototype is feasible and positively evaluated as a digital support system for career guidance and labor-market access. Further studies are required to test matching accuracy, longitudinal employment outcomes, scalability, and effectiveness across multiple vocational schools

Keywords


Website-Based Application, Vocational Guidance, Vocational Education, Labor Market, Employment

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.52088/ijesty.v6i2.1579

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