Media education and career orientation

9/21/2026

With Florian Girlinger from SURFjobs, we discuss digital career orientation, the influence of short videos and algorithms, as well as the media skills that young people need for their professional future.

Competent & Critical – The Podcast for Media Education
“Competent & Critical” is the podcast from Radio FRO and the Forum for Media Education focusing on media literacy and digital education. Together with experts from education, journalism, media, and civil society, we explore the question of what skills people need to navigate the digital media world safely, autonomously, and critically – and how these skills can be taught.

Career Orientation in the Digital Age – with Florian Girlinger from SURFjobs
How do young people today find out what profession they want to pursue in the future? TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and algorithmically personalized feeds have not only changed how young people consume media but also how they gather information about education, careers, and their own future.

In this episode, Simon Moser talks with Florian Girlinger, co-founder of SURFjobs. The platform relies, among other things, on a format familiar to young people from social media: short videos.

But what does it mean when we use the mechanisms of social media platforms for education and career orientation? We discuss how short videos influence our attention and decisions, what responsibility algorithms carry, and how realistically companies can portray their professional world in short videos.

Additionally, we turn our attention to the world of work itself: What digital and media skills do young people need today to be successful in their careers? Are young people automatically digitally competent just because they grow up with smartphones and social media? And does our education system adequately prepare them for a working world where digital technologies, AI, and the ability to critically evaluate information are becoming increasingly important?

An episode about career orientation between the classroom and short videos – and about why media literacy is also an important prerequisite for shaping one's own professional future autonomously.

Co-financed by the European Union | ProEuropeanValuesAT.