What’s the Point of Xello: Opinion on how career cruising programs are ineffective

Pull aside any kid in the East hallways and ask them about Xello, a career cruising service, and they’ll tell you it’s a complete joke. While a vast majority of states mandate that every student completes the personality tests, career path questions and other life-planning quizzes, it isn’t beneficial in the slightest. 

I was first introduced to Xello in seventh grade during our study hall. It was the new shiny toy the district was implementing throughout K-12. 

I was skeptical about this “life changing” career finding program. When I made my account, I took their intro tests and after 30 minutes of answering questions it told me I was a tactile learner and my personality style was a persuader. The couple dozen questions — just another disguise for busywork — that ate up most of my study time made me despise  Xello. The system claimed to give you curated careers, but the ones they suggested were random and generic. For example, according to Xello I’d be good in heating, air conditioning and refrigeration tech. And let me tell you, that is the last place I hope to end up.

Every Tuesday and Thursday during Knight Time in middle school I would be required to do seemingly-random activities that didn’t help me at all or give me a good idea of what I wanted to do with my life. We would watch videos that my teacher was required to play and even he wasn’t satisfied with them. 

Besides the fact that it takes away time from doing other things like homework or getting help from teachers, it doesn’t give new any new career recommendations or info. What I mean by this is when I forged my answers back in eighth grade on so it would say my best career fit is an architect, that isn’t that same career path as I want now but it keeps telling me that’s what I should be. At least that’s what it told me to be when I opened Xello last — which was a year ago. 

This year, there’s been talk of Xello and how we’re supposed to be doing it in seminar, but no one in my class has even so much as opened it. My seminar teacher has sent emails about doing Xello but I just ignore them like the rest of my class because we have more important things to do than take ineffective quizzes. In no way am I trying to be rude, I simply do not see the point of the endless quizzes that give you no real intuition on your future. Even if there is a genuine purpose for the program, the district has yet to tell us what it is and if this is something that has actually made an impact on students’ lives.

If schools really want their students to prepare for their future, they should do it in a better manner. Answering questions for a test I don’t care about and will never use again isn’t getting the kind of excitement for career planning that the state thinks it does. 

If it were optional — maybe a club with career planning activities — I think it would be more effective. Then students wouldn’t feel obligated to do it and put effort into it because it would be something they’d actually care about and do on their own time. At East, there’s already a career planning class that does more in-depth things than Xello. They enjoy the class because it’s something they wanted to do and signed up for rather than some random assignment the school made them do. 

I think the idea of Xello was good but the execution and overall program didn’t live up to everyone’s expectations.