Career Guidance in Dubai and the UAE

Choosing a path is hard, and the choices start early

For most students in the UAE, the big decisions arrive before they feel ready. The subjects you choose in your last years of school shape which majors are open to you, and the major you choose shapes your first steps into work. Yet many students only know a handful of careers well: the ones their parents, relatives or favourite TV shows have shown them.

Social media doesn't make it easier. Every scroll brings another "dream job" or a friend's announcement, and it's easy to end up choosing a path out of pressure rather than fit. Noura Antabli, the founder of Mint Minds, writes about this in Breaking the Scroll.

Good career guidance doesn't hand students an answer. It helps them understand what they enjoy, shows them the options that fit, and connects them with people who can tell them what the work is really like. That's what Mint Minds is built to do.

How Mint Minds guides students

Mint Minds works in three steps, and students can take them at their own pace.

1. Discover your interests. Students take the Holland Code assessment, based on psychologist John L. Holland's RIASEC model. It's 74 short questions about everyday activities, rated from "Strongly Dislike" to "Strongly Like", and it takes about 15 minutes. There are no right or wrong answers, and progress saves, so students can stop and come back later. The result is their top three Holland codes: the kinds of work they're most likely to enjoy. It's an interest test, one of several kinds of psychometric test students may come across.

2. Explore careers that fit. Their code is matched against more than 370 careers mapped to the UAE job market, from engineering and healthcare to the creative industries and business. For each career, students see the study paths that lead there: the subjects, degrees and certifications to look at. They also get a guide to UAE higher education, with links to every accredited university and program in the country.

3. Talk to people who do the work. Students can book one-on-one sessions with industry mentors: verified professionals in fields like engineering, business and finance, healthcare, technology, creative arts, and law and policy. Sessions happen over Google Meet, so students anywhere in the UAE can join. A mentor can explain what a typical day looks like, what they wish they'd known at school, and how they got where they are.

How this fits with school counsellors

Mint Minds isn't a counselling service, and it doesn't replace one-on-one counselling. What it does is give students and the adults supporting them something concrete to work with.

A student who arrives at a meeting with their school counsellor, or a conversation at home, already knowing their top three Holland codes and holding a shortlist of careers they're curious about has a much better starting point than "I don't know what I want to do". The counsellor can spend the time on what they do best: talking through options, university applications and the student's own situation.

If a student is struggling with stress, anxiety or wellbeing, the right first step is a school counsellor or a qualified professional. Career exploration can wait until they're ready.

For parents

Many parents want to help but aren't sure where to start, especially when their teen's interests don't match a career they know well. With Mint Minds, you create the account and your teen takes the assessment on it. It takes about 15 minutes, and you can both see the results: their top three Holland codes, matched careers in the UAE and the study paths that lead there.

The assessment is a one-time AED 75 payment. You can set it up for your teen in a few minutes, then use the results to talk through subjects, universities and next steps together.

For schools

Schools can give every student access to Mint Minds. Schools buy student profiles, invite students by email or by importing an Excel sheet, and follow each student's progress and results in a school dashboard. Career advisers and counsellors get a consistent starting point for every student, and students get careers and study paths built around the UAE. Request a demo to see how it works.

Real careers, real people

Job titles only tell you so much. Our Day in the Life series introduces students to real people and what their work actually involves:

• Sherif Ismail, who studied mechanical and mechatronics engineering and now works across AI, robotics and business
• Cedrick Pruitt, an IO psychology PhD candidate who teaches English while researching how expat teachers in the UAE experience hiring and assessment
• Ashley Green, who moved from teaching in Dubai to founding a wellbeing company built on positive psychology

Reading how someone else found their path won't tell you yours, but it can show you how many paths there are.