Best way to use variables to skip slides based on selected career path (single scene setup)

Hi everyone,

I’m building an Articulate Storyline course that allows learners to explore 9 different career paths. Each path contains mostly the same content, but certain video slides should be skipped depending on the career path selected.

Here’s my current setup:

• I have a menu slide with 9 buttons (one for each career path).
• All 9 buttons currently jump into one single scene that contains all course content.
• The “main” career path includes every video slide.
• The other 8 paths follow the same flow, but should omit certain video slides that don’t apply to that role.
• My goal is to avoid duplicating scenes/content (file size is getting too large).

What I’m trying to accomplish:
When a learner selects a career path from the menu, I want Storyline to “remember” that selection and automatically skip certain video slides as they progress through the course.

My question:
What is the best way to structure this using variables + triggers?

For example:

• Learner selects “Path A”
• Storyline sets a variable like CareerPath = A
• When the learner reaches certain slides, Storyline checks the variable and either:
  • allows the learner to view the slide, OR
  • automatically jumps to the next applicable slide

What I need help with:

• What type of variable setup is best for this (text variable vs True/False variables)?
• What triggers should be placed on the menu buttons?
• What triggers should be placed on the slides that need to be skipped?
• Is it better to place the “skip logic” on each slide, or on Next buttons, or via slide-level triggers?

If anyone has an example file, tutorial, or recommended best-practice approach for conditional branching like this, I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks!