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Digital Badges: A Gamified Path to Discovering a Career Path

Digital Badges: A Gamified Path to Discovering a Career Path

April 15, 2025

This year's VILNIUS TECH Career Day GRAVITY was marked not only by a record number of participants but also by an innovative approach to self-discovery: a unique challenge was offered to event visitors – a digital badge competition. It involved more than 400 students, who collected more than 2,000 badges in total. The ten participants with the most badges collected were awarded prizes established by the general partners.

Informal Format – Serious Results

As many as 7 thematic badges were created for the competition, encouraging students to look at their career expectations and answer questions about what is important to them, where they would like to work, how they would like to balance their personal and professional lives, what they can offer to an employer and what competencies are most relevant to them.

The tasks encouraged young people to visit company booths and delve into the needs of today's job market, and most participants took advantage of this opportunity – communicating with company representatives, inquiring about internship and job offers, and gaining new knowledge about the kind of people that employers need today.

According to Doc. Dr. Ingrida Leščiauskienė, Head of Digital Badges System Development, such competitions help students not only identify their strengths, but also discover professional fields that match their values and lifestyle.
"Digital badges are becoming an increasingly recognizable tool that helps to identify personal competencies, improve purposefully, and successfully integrate into the labor market," she says.

Career – Not Just a Job, But Also Meaning

The competition revealed that today's students seek not only well-paid jobs, but also a meaningful contribution to society and the environment. The opportunity to contribute to improving people's lives, participate in the creation of more sustainable energy, and be a part of change is becoming an important lever when choosing the nature of the job and the company. Young talents also emphasized that in their dream companies they are inspired by leadership, environmental values, and the importance of the company's activities on a national scale.

Students said that the badge system helped them understand which skills are most important for their chosen field – from analytical thinking and technical creativity in biotechnology to cultural awareness and media literacy in the field of game design.

"It was very interesting to see how our specialty can be applied in unexpected fields. Now I know what to look for," confessed one of the participants, emphasizing that participation in the competition helped her for the first time to clearly define her career path.

"I am a game design enthusiast – I value creativity, problem-solving skills, and teamwork. These competencies allow me to create not only interesting but also meaningful games," says another career day participant.

Project Manager Doc. Dr. I. Leščiauskienė says she is delighted that the digital badge competition at VILNIUS TECH Career Day has become a successful example of how technology, self-awareness, and professional orientation can be combined into one experience that lasts longer than one day.