Frequently asked questions

Career Adviser is an Australian career and education research platform. Each career profile lays out what the job actually involves, the different ways into it, which Australian institutions teach it, what it costs, what it may earn, and practical next steps — in one place, rather than a hundred browser tabs.

Our mission is to help Australian students make better-informed decisions about their future by making career and education research easier to access and understand.

It is built and operated by Cognify Labs, a Sydney software and AI studio, at careers.advicegenie.com.au.

Cognify Labs, a Sydney-based software and AI studio. The same team designs, builds and runs the whole platform — the research pipeline that turns a career title into a structured document, the renderer that displays it, and the infrastructure it sits on. The background is 25+ years of full-stack engineering, data and AI, including compliance-grade financial-services software.

About Career Adviser →

Mainly high school students and school leavers deciding what to study, and the parents, families, teachers and career advisers who support them. University students and career changers use it too. A student needs nothing — no account, no sign-in — to read everything published.

No. Career Adviser publishes information — pathways, entry requirements, universities, likely costs and returns. It is informational only. Nothing on the site is financial, legal, migration or careers-counselling advice, and it is not a substitute for speaking to a qualified adviser, your school, or the institution directly.

Terms of use →

We welcome conversations with career advisers, schools, educators, universities and organisations that want to help more students access career research.

Partnership opportunities →

No. It is designed to complement career advisers, teachers and parents, not replace them. The research is a starting point; the people who know a student best help turn it into a decision.

Yes. Every published career — all six panels and the full money calculator — is free to read, with no account needed.

No. Browsing and reading the catalogue is anonymous and needs no sign-up. An account is only needed to request a new career, vote on a pending request, or generate a personalised plan.

Six panels, the same for every career:

• Role — what the job involves day to day, the specialties it spans, and where AI is likely to change it over the next decade.
• Routes — every path in (university, TAFE, apprenticeship, cadetship, Defence, career change), laid out as a decision tree rather than a single track.
• Universities — every Australian institution that offers it, compared on ATAR or selection rank, rankings, graduate outcomes and placement hours.
• Entry — prerequisites, bonus-point and adjustment schemes, rural and equity pathways, and what a lower ATAR still gets you toward the same destination.
• Money — HECS-HELP, tuition, living costs, break-even and lifetime earnings, computed live in your browser.
• Verdict — the fastest pathway, the cheapest and the most prestigious, plus a plain action plan for the next twelve months.

One AI generates the panels and one renderer displays them, so comparing a Commercial Airline Pilot with a Physiotherapist means reading two dossiers with an identical shape — not two differently organised documents.

The catalogue is being seeded and grows as careers are requested, researched and reviewed. The browse page always shows what is live now. The aim is a few hundred of the most-searched Australian careers rather than an exhaustive list of every job title.

Explore Careers →

Yes — read it, link to it, and quote it with attribution. You may not republish a dossier wholesale as your own content.

Publicly available Australian sources — government labour-market and occupation information, the Commonwealth CRICOS register of accredited courses and providers, state and territory admissions centres, and public institutional and web pages retrieved through a web-search API. Course names, durations, campuses and placement hours are read from the national register, not written by the model.

Because the model's freedom is deliberately narrow. Every claim is labelled — verified fact, estimate, opinion or forecast — visibly, on the claim itself. That labelling is enforced in code: a generated document that slips an unsourced statement through as a fact is rejected before it can be published, and every fact must carry its source.

Dollar figures are never left to the model to add up. The money calculator recomputes every total in your browser from the inputs the model declared, so no number appears that the page cannot re-derive.

Every claim in a dossier carries exactly one of these:

• Verified fact — checked against a primary source, such as a university, a government register or an admissions centre.
• Estimate — a reasonable figure derived from real data, but not published verbatim anywhere.
• Opinion — a judgement call: useful context, but weigh it rather than just accepting it.
• Forecast — a prediction about where the profession is heading, not a fact about where it stands today.

A document is considered current for 365 days from generation, after which it is flagged as possibly out of date. Admissions requirements, ATARs, costs and rankings change between refreshes. Always confirm course details, entry requirements and closing dates directly with the institution or your state's admissions centre before acting on anything here.

Each panel records whether current sources actually informed it. If research did not complete for a panel, it is shown with an amber banner so you know that panel leans on the model's general knowledge rather than a live check of current sources. Treat those panels with extra caution and verify anything that matters.

No — never. No ranking fees, no "featured course" placements, no affiliate links. Nothing in a comparison table is for sale. A sponsored ranking would destroy the one reason to trust the site: the label on every claim.

Yes. Careers are community-requested, researched by the pipeline, and checked by us before they are published under our name.

Tell us — we would rather fix it than have it stand. If something published is materially wrong we will correct it.

Contact us →

Yes. Create a free account and add it to the request queue. You can also vote for careers other people have already requested, which is how we decide what to research next.

It is not instant. Requests are reviewed, then researched in batches, and generation is approved by an administrator rather than run on demand. You are notified when a career you requested is ready to read.

Generating a dossier costs real money in research and AI. Requests are gated behind a free account and a review step so the queue stays genuine. Reading anything already published never needs an account.

Yes — a monthly allowance per account, which resets at the start of each month.

It applies a career profile to your circumstances — your state or territory, your year level, whether you can relocate to study, and your own cost figures. Sign in and open any career profile to create one.

It rules out the approaches that do not fit, ranks what is left for your situation, recalculates the money model on your numbers, and lays out a dated plan for your year level. You can print it or save it as a PDF to bring to a conversation with a parent, teacher or career adviser.

Only you. It is private to your account, never published, and never shown to anyone else.

No — no queue and no email. You ask for it from within a career dossier and it is generated on demand; the page updates and shows it when it is ready, usually within about a minute.

No. The money section is general information and the figures in it are indicative estimates only. They are modelled from published rates and typical costs, and they take no account of your objectives, financial situation or needs. They are not quotes, and not a projection of what you personally will pay or earn.

This applies to the personalised plan too. It is built from the answers you give us, but it is still general in nature — it is not personal financial, legal or taxation advice, and it is not a recommendation to enrol in a course or take on a study loan.

Before acting on any figure here, speak to a qualified financial adviser about your own circumstances, and confirm course costs directly with the institution and your state admissions centre.

Terms of use →

The model supplies the inputs and constants — course cost, the share of salary that goes to compulsory repayments, expected income during study — and your browser does the arithmetic: column totals, break-even years and lifetime earnings. No dollar figure appears that the page can't re-derive from the stated inputs.

The calculator is built for domestic students paying a Commonwealth-supported contribution through HECS-HELP — typically about a third of the full fee. International tuition fees are deliberately never shown, because a domestic reader seeing an international fee would over-estimate the cost roughly threefold.

The free calculator runs on the model's stated assumptions, computed live in your browser. Recalculating it on your own numbers — your real living costs, your expected income — is part of the personalised plan.

If you create an account: your email address and name (through Amazon Cognito), the careers you request or vote for, and any personalisation inputs you type in. Reading the catalogue collects nothing that identifies you.

Data Privacy Statement →

Entirely in AWS's Asia Pacific (Sydney) Region. Your personal and account data does not leave Australia. AI generation uses Australia-resident Claude models on AWS Bedrock, so prompt and response content stays in Australia.

The one exception is the career-research web search, which sends only research terms about the career — never anything about you — to a search provider that may operate offshore.

We run no advertising trackers, no third-party advertising pixels and no tracking cookies, and we never sell your data. Your sign-in state and your light/dark theme preference are kept in your browser’s local storage on your own device.

Data Privacy Statement →

Sign-in is handled by Amazon Cognito using the Secure Remote Password protocol, so your password is never sent to us or stored by us. Threat protection is enforced (credentials known to have been exposed in breaches are blocked), the account-role attribute cannot be self-assigned, and sessions are short-lived.

Yes. The audience includes high-school students, and the free catalogue is built for exactly that — everything a student needs to read is available with nothing collected about them. Creating an account (to request a career, vote or generate a plan) collects the email address and name of whoever creates it.

Email hello@cognifylabs.ai and we will action it directly — a copy, a correction, or deletion of your account and the data attached to it. A self-service control is planned but not built yet.

Any current browser on desktop, tablet or phone. It is a standard responsive web app — there is no app to install — and it has a light and a dark theme.

Not publicly. If you have a specific use, get in touch and tell us what you need it for.

Contact us →