Career Guidance and Orientation

Career guidance and orientation services have been defined both by the Organization
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2004) and in a World Bank
report (Watts and Fretwell, 2004) as:

Services intended to assist individuals, of any age and any point throughout their
lives, to make educational, training and occupational choices and to manage their
careers. They include three main elements:
Career information, covering information on courses, occupations and career
paths. This includes labour market information. It may be provided in print
form, but increasingly is web-based in nature.
Career counselling, conducted on a one-to-one basis or in small groups, in
which attention is focused on the distinctive career issues faced by
individuals.
Career education, as part of the educational curriculum, in which attention is
paid to helping groups of individuals to develop the competences for
managing their career development.

The term career guidance is sometimes used to cover all of these; sometimes to
cover the first two.

The concept of career guidance needs to be distinguished clearly from two related
but basically different processes: selection (making decisions about individuals) and
promotion (attempting to persuade individuals to choose particular opportunities at
the expense of others), both of which are primarily designed to meet the needs of
opportunity providers (education and training institutions, and employers). Career
guidance, by contrast, is concerned with helping individuals to choose between the
full range of available opportunities, in relation to their distinctive abilities, interests
and values.

In the past, a distinction has often been drawn between educational guidance,
concerned with course choices, and vocational guidance, concerned with
occupational choices. However, careers are commonly not chosen at a single point
in time, but constructed through a series of interrelated learning and work choices
made throughout life. This has led to a new paradigm in career guidance, designed
to support lifelong career development.

Closely related to career guidance is a range of other activities. These include

tutoring, coaching and mentoring; portfolios and individual learning plans; interests
inventories, psychometric tests and other online tools and resources; work
experience (when used for exploratory rather than preparatory purposes), work
shadowing, work simulations and work visits; taster programs; and enterprise
activities.

Career information is the core of all effective career guidance provision. It needs to
include information on occupations, on learning opportunities, and on the
relationships and pathways between the two. It also needs to include labour market
information, on changing supply and demand in relation to different occupations. In
many middle- and low-income countries, however, career information in general,
and labour market information in particular, is very limited (see e.g. Sultana and
Watts, 2007; Zelloth, 2009).

In many respects the choices about schooling, work, and careers are much more
difficult issues of identity, involving deeper issues of what a person is, what their
values are, how they position themselves with respect to others and to social groups,
what they think of as a worthy life the many different elements defining who they
are (Grubb, 2002).

Information therefore needs to be supplemented by other career interventions if it is

to be effective.
Traditionally, the dominant model of career guidance provision was based on talent-
matching approaches: measuring individual abilities and matching them to the
demands of different occupations. This has been challenged on a number of grounds.
Accordingly, there has been a shift to a new paradigm, based on three main
components:
Career guidance should be available throughout life, to support lifelong
learning and career development.
It should be viewed as a learning experience, encompassing a range of
learning interventions.
It should foster the individuals autonomy, helping them to develop the skills
and knowledge they need in order to manage their career decisions and
transitions.

This reflects a move from a psychological to a pedagogical approach: from testing

to tasting, with a primary focus on helping individuals to develop their career
management skills. At the same time, there is evidence from a Dutch study in
vocational education that concrete learning experiences need to be accompanied by
opportunities to participate in career-oriented dialogues if students are to develop
career competencies effectively (Kuijpers et al., 2011).
In reframing career guidance and orientation provision, a key role is being played
by information and communication technologies (ICT). These have huge potential
for extending access to services and for improving the quality of those services. This
includes not only information, but also automated interactions in which users can
interrogate the information in relation to their own preferences and characteristics,
without additional use of staff time.

Current career guidance and orientation structures

There are three main groups of organizational structures for delivering career
guidance and orientation services:
Career development provision in educational institutions,
Career development provision in workplaces,
Careers services in the community.

Current career guidance and orientation practices in relation to TVET

Career guidance and orientation is relevant to the quality and effectiveness of TVET
programs at two stages: prior to entering a TVET program, and within the TVET
program.

Prior to entry, two principles are important (Watts, 2009):

a) That all young people should be made aware, within their career education
programs, of TVET options alongside the other options available to them,
b) That young people interested in TVET options should have access to career
counselling, supported by high-quality career information, to ensure that
their choices are well informed and well thought through.

In relation to pre-entry guidance, there is evidence in a number of countries of bias

in favour of general education options at the expense of TVET options. This is
particularly the case where career advice is provided by academically trained
teachers with limited knowledge of the wider world of work. This problem may be
exacerbated where institutions have an interest in encouraging students to enter
courses at their own institution rather than those offered elsewhere, especially where
school funding is linked to student recruitment (OECD, 2010). This is one of the
rationales for providing career guidance to school students from an external service.
It is also a rationale for improving the professionalization of career guidance
practitioners. Such moves are supported by concern that career guidance should be
a separate profession rather than being assimilated into psychological counselling,
and that the list of competences required should pay more attention than in the recent
past to knowledge of labour and learning markets (OECD, 2010).
It is also important that career education and career counselling should be supported
by relevant career information. In relation to TVET, such provision needs to include
information on (Watts, 2009):
The available TVET options;
The qualifications to which they lead, and the further qualifications to which
they give access;
The occupations to which these qualifications provide access, and the extent
to which the qualifications are sufficient for entry;
The salary/wage levels offered by these occupations;
The projected demand for these occupations;
The labour market outcomes achieved by those successfully completing the
programs, including the nature of their jobs, their salary/wage levels, whether
or not the jobs are in an occupational sector directly related to their TVET
program, and the extent to which they are using the skills and competences
acquired in the program.

In TVET programs, the key principles are:

That career guidance should be available at all relevant decision points, and
on exit,
That career education programs have an important role to play both in
preparing students for future career decisions and in supporting the
transferability of their learning.
Both need to be built as core strategies into curriculum design (Watts, 2009).
Some TVET programs adopt structures of progressive specialization, which mean
that further decisions carrying career consequences need to be made after entering
the program. In addition, some countries have been introducing structural changes
to improve progression pathways between TVET and higher education.

More broadly, career education elements in TVET programs need to pay attention
to career paths in the occupations to which the program is designed to lead. This
should include, for example, opportunities for self-employment and
entrepreneurship. Furthermore, the elements should give some attention to other
occupations to which the competences acquired in the program might be
transferable. This can include experience-based elements, such as additional work
placements in other sectors, in order to demonstrate their transferability in action.

It is also important for career guidance and placement services to be available

towards the end of courses, to help students to review their plans. In addition, help
needs to be available earlier in courses for any students who are thinking of, or at
risk of, dropping out, to ensure that they are able to transfer as easily as possible to
an alternative program. In general, though, career guidance tends to be weaker and
more often absent in vocational than in general education programs.

A possible rationale for the reduced attention to career guidance in vocational

institutions compared with general education institutions is that, attention to career
pathways related to particular vocational courses is embedded in the courses
themselves, and in the arrangements made for work-experience placements, for
tutorial support, and for making use of the experiences and contacts of staff
(especially, in some cases, part-time staff) in the relevant occupational sector.
Three issues need to be raised in relation to such provision:
a) Whether it introduces students to the full range of opportunities in the sector,
b) Whether it covers career pathways in the sector rather being confined to entry-
level jobs,
c) Whether it covers the needs of students who might be interested in changing
career direction (including making them aware of other occupational sectors
to which some of the competences they have acquired might be transferable).

Career guidance and orientation is strongly relevant to TVET programs, but its
relationship to such programs has been under-explored and is still weakly developed
in many countries, especially middle- and low-income countries. There are signs that
this may now be beginning to change, not least because career guidance and
orientation is beginning to be recognized as a significant means of making TVET
more responsive and demand-driven, and addressing its relationship to occupational
flexibility. It is critically important prior to entry to TVET programs, to ensure that
TVET options are considered by a wider range of learners, and that learners
decisions related to them are well informed and well thought through. It is also
important during and on exit from such programs, to support individuals sense of
direction and the transferability of their learning. More attention needs to be given
to the policy implications of these issues, and to evaluating what can be learned from
current and innovative practices. Such evaluations should include impact evidence.

Policy rationale for career guidance and orientation in general

Career guidance and orientation is widely viewed as a public good as well as a
private good. In other words, its benefits potentially accrue not only to the individual
recipient of the services but also to the wider society. The policy rationales for
attention to career guidance and orientation as a public good are:
a) Learning goals, including improving the efficiency of the education and
training system and managing its interface with the labour market. If
individuals make decisions about what they are to learn in a well-informed
 and well thought-through way, linked to their interests, their capacities and
their aspirations, investments in education and training systems are likely to
yield higher returns.
b) Labour market goals, including improving the match between supply and
demand and managing adjustments to change. If people find jobs that use their
potential and meet their own goals, they are likely to be more motivated and
therefore more productive.
c) Social equity goals, including supporting equal opportunities and promoting
social inclusion. Career guidance services can raise the aspirations of
disadvantaged groups and support them in gaining access to opportunities that
might otherwise have been denied to them. (Informal guidance, by contrast,
tends to reinforce existing social inequities.)

Some policy goals for career guidance and orientation services

Learning goals
a) Supporting lifelong learning (for both youth and adults) and the development
of human resources to support national and individual economic growth.
b) Supporting a more flexible education and training system.
c) Supporting a stronger but more flexible vocational orientation within the
school system.
d) Improving the efficiency of education and training systems by reducing
dropout rates and increasing graduation rates.
e) Strengthening linkages between education/training systems and the labour
market.

Labour market goals

a) Improving labour market efficiency.
b) Reducing mismatch between supply and demand.
c) Addressing skill shortages.
d) Improving labour adaptability in response to market conditions, in terms of both
geographical and occupational mobility.
e) Reducing the extent and duration of unemployment.
f) Minimizing individual dependency on income-support systems, as these are
introduced.

Social equity goals

a) Supporting equal opportunities in relation to education and employment.
b) Addressing the needs of disadvantaged and marginalized groups.
c) Supporting the social integration of ethnic minorities.
d) Supporting female labour market participation.
 e) Addressing gender segmentation in the labour market.

Policy rationale for career guidance and orientation in relation to TVET

Most of the goals mentioned above are relevant to TVET. But the role of career
guidance and orientation in strengthening the role of individuals in driving national
strategies is of particular significance, supporting moves to make TVET more
responsive and demand-driven. The case for TVET is based on preparing learners
for employment, thereby meeting labour market demand. In seeking closer
articulation with labour markets, attention may accordingly be paid to planning
approaches based on consultation with employers; but this is rarely effective in itself
(OECD, 2010). It therefore tends to be replaced, or at least supplemented, by an
approach based on responsiveness to learner preferences. The rationale for this
offered by OECD (2010) is threefold:
a) Students are often good judges of their own skills and the characteristics that
may make them better suited to one job than another so taking account of
their preferences leads to higher productivity.
b) Students know more about what they most enjoy doing, so that even when
labour market outcomes are weaker, they are compensated in terms of their
well-being.
c) It is counterproductive to coerce students into careers they do not want the
very high proportion of VET graduates in nearly all countries who change
occupations after only a few years probably reflects some welcome career
development, but it may also be the result of some misconceived career
choices.

In addition, learners will want to read the labour market and to enter programs with
the best prospects of getting them into desirable employment in both the short and
long term. There is thus a strong policy case for effective career choices to assure
the quality of these processes, by ensuring that learners decision-making is well
informed in terms of both self-awareness and opportunity awareness and well
thought through. In these terms, career guidance and orientation acts as a further
bridge between TVET programs and the world of work, with the learner as an active
agent in strengthening this relationship. Investment in career guidance may also in
some cases be justified as a means of increasing interest in TVET as opposed to
general education.

Why Career Guidance Matters

Career guidance contributes to several policy goals based on the fact that
individuals will be able to decide for a well-suiting career and herewith
a) improve the efficiency of the education and vocational training system,
 b) improve the matching between supply and demand on the labour market,
c) increase productivity through higher satisfaction of personnel with the work
environment,
d) release pressure from public employment services as individuals are able to
retrieve their career management skills during their entire lives, and
e) Challenge gender or job-related stereotypes and promote social inclusion.

What is Career Counseling?

Your career development is a lifelong process that, whether you know it or not,
actually started when you were born! There are a number of factors that influence
your career development, including your interests, abilities, values, personality,
background, and circumstances. Career Counseling is a process that will help you
to know and understand yourself and the world of work in order to make career,
educational, and life decisions.
Career development is more than just deciding on a major and what job you want to
get when you graduate. It really is a lifelong process, meaning that throughout your
life you will change, situations will change, and you will continually have to make
career and life decisions. The goal of Career Counseling is to not only help you make
the decisions you need to make now, but to give you the knowledge and skills you
need to make future career and life decisions.

What can I expect?

Your Career Counselor WILL:
Help you figure out who you are and what you want out of your education,
your career, and your life.
Be someone for you to talk to about your thoughts, ideas, feelings, and
concerns about your career and educational choices, who will help you sort
out, organize, and make sense of your thoughts and feelings.
Help you identify the factors influencing your career development, and help
you assess your interests, abilities, and values.
Help you locate resources and sources of career information.
Help you to determine next steps and develop a plan to achieve your goals.

Your Career Counselor WONT:

Tell you what to do, or tell you what you should major in or what career you
should pursue.

Who needs Career Counseling?

Since career development is a lifelong process, Career Counseling can be
appropriate for anyone, including freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, and even
alumni. The earlier you get started making intentional decisions about your future,
however, the better prepared you will be! We recommend that all freshmen come in
and visit with a Career Counselor.
Below are some examples of concerns that bring students to Career Counseling:

Exploring Career and Major Options

I have no idea what I want to do with my life.
I dont know what to major in.
Ive narrowed it down to a couple career options, but Im having a hard time
choosing between them.
I know what I want to major in, but I have no idea what I want to do once I
graduate.
I know what I want to do, but Im not sure what the best major would be.
I want to know what kinds of jobs I can get with my major.
I dont feel like I know enough about all the different careers out there to
know what I want to do.

Resolving Conflicts
I like a lot of different subjects, and I keep changing my major because Im
not sure which one is the best for me!
I dont like any of my classes and none of the majors seem really appealing
to me.
I have a lot of work experience and I want to find a new career path that will
build on the skills I already have.
I was planning on going into the _______ program, but I applied and didnt
get in. What do I do now?
I always thought I wanted to be a _______, but I got into my major and I
really dont like it!
I really like my major, but its not what I want to do for my career.
I know what type of work Id like to do, but Im afraid I wont be able to
make enough money doing it.
My family really wants me to be a _______, but Im not sure if thats really
what I want.
Ive always planned on being a _______, but Im wondering if its only
because thats all I know.
I want to find a field to go into where there will always be plenty of jobs.
I want to find a career that will allow me to provide significant financial
support for my family.
 Im working towards my career, but I think I might just really want to be a
stay-at-home parent.
Ive always planned to stay in Boise, but to do what Id like to do Id have
to move.
I cant find a job, so Im thinking about going to grad school.

Who is a Career Counselor?

The Career Center staff member assisting you holds a masters degree and has
expertise in career development theory, counseling techniques, administration and
interpretation of assessments, and career information resources. Your job search/
career attainment process is also a critical aspect of your career development, and
therefore, Job Search Advising and Career Counseling are intertwined. Your Career
Counselor is also fully trained to assist with all aspects of your job search.

Career Guidance and Counseling Programs

What is a Career Guidance and Counseling Program?
It is a comprehensive, developmental program designed to assist individuals in
making and implementing informed educational and occupational choices. A career
guidance and counseling program develops an individual's competencies in self-
knowledge, educational and occupational exploration, and career planning.

Why is Career Guidance and Counseling Key to the Delivery of Vocational-

Technical Education?
Career guidance and counseling programs help individuals acquire the knowledge,
skills, and experience necessary to identify options, explore alternatives and succeed
in society. These programs prepare individuals better for the changing workplace of
the 21st century by:
teaching labor market changes and complexity of the workplace
broadening knowledge, skills, and abilities
improving decision making skills
increasing self-esteem and motivation
building interpersonal effectiveness
maximizing career opportunities
improving employment marketability and opportunities
promoting effective job placement
strengthening employer relations

Who Benefits from Career Guidance and Counseling Programs?

Everyone benefits--youth and adults, male and female, disabled, disadvantaged,
minorities, limited English proficient, incarcerated, dropouts, single parents,
displaced homemakers, teachers, administrators, parents and employers.

Where are Career Guidance and Counseling Programs offered?

Everywhere--elementary, junior and senior high schools, community colleges,
technical institutes, universities, career resource centers, correctional facilities,
community-based organizations, human services agencies, community and business
organizations, skill clinics, employment and placement services.

What are the Key Components of Successful Career Guidance and Counseling
Programs?
A planned sequence of activities and experiences to achieve specific
competencies such as self-appraisal, decision making, goal setting, and career
planning
Accountability (outcome oriented) and program improvement (based on results
of process/outcome evaluations)
Qualified leadership
Effective management needed to support comprehensive career guidance
programs
A team approach where certified counselors are central to the program
Adequate facilities, materials, resources
Strong professional development activities so counselors can regularly update
their professional knowledge and skills
Different approaches to deliver the program such as outreach, assessment,
counseling, curriculum, program and job placement, follow-up, consultation,
referral

What are some Opportunities for Career Guidance Counselors?

Counselors have opportunities to participate in an education and training system that
integrates academic and vocational education, to encourage individuals' greater
participation in further education by articulating secondary and post-secondary
education, to renew their commitment to servicing the most at-risk or disadvantaged
of our society, to promote program outcomes and performance measures, and to
respond to business and economic development.