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CAREER GUIDANCE
According to the EU and the OECD career guidance can be a key policy area in terms of life-
LONG learning and economic and social development.
The EU document “Memorandum on Lifelong Learning (EU commission 2000), which
explicitly points to guidance as one of 6 central policy areas, opens an avenue for not merely
life-LONG learning but also life-WIDE learning.
These concepts are closely related to: modern, highly individualised career paths call for and
build upon personal (ling, wide, and indeed, deep) guidance, tutoring, mentoring, coaching
and counselling.
The OECD pointed in its report “From Initial Education to Working Life – Making
Transitions Work (OECD 2000) to the fact that the national and indeed the global economy
are decisive factors in creating smooth transitions from education to work, included
information and careers guidance as key factors.
Career development and careers guidance are pivotal not only in terms of sustaining
economic, societal and personal development, but also in terms of creating a sustainable
future, economically, socially, and environmentally and on an individual level.
In this introduction you already hear the three important issues of careers guidance:
Education - individual - labour market
It is in this triangle that careers guidance plays its role.
Employability
Contamination of employee and adaptability
Meaning: an employee who is constantly capable of adapting to changing circumstances and
working conditions.
A person is „employable‟, if he or she is employable both quantitatively and qualitatively, is
functionally and geographically mobile and, finally, is willing to undertake training and
change.
In other words the employee must have a clear vision of what his or hers own skills and
possibilities and must be able of communicating those skills and abilities.
From the viewpoint of labour market one can define it as follows:
The transition from industrial society to post-industrial society or knowledge based society
called for a need of change in the conceptual framework of career guidance.
The dynamism of today‟s labour market demands that individuals learn to keep their market
value (their employability) up to scratch and that they learn to become „active job operators‟
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Old themes in career guidance as study of career choice are no longer what is required, but an
new conceptual framework with a new set of tools is required in order to get to career
guidance seen as
Increasing Career Competence
By this the following is meant:
First the development of actor competences: meaning the capacity to establish a meaningful
and worthwhile relationship between the investments in education, the desired working role
and the desired biography.
The next task which is required is the development of transition competence. Meaning the
capacity of the job seeker to communicate with potential employers about his/her added value
for the employer in question, now and in the future and if necessary to make compromises
without losing sight of personal direction and identity.
And last the development of the work competence should be achieved. Meaning the capacity
also based on real sense of direction and identity, to remain employable under changed
circumstances.
Why This Need for a New Framework?
Until recently a career was above all tied to an occupation and a job at a very limited number
of companies. For the majority of those in employment further training and retraining was not
common, not necessary and even unthinkable.
Careers developed primarily vertical; promotion was achieved on basis of age and length of
services.
At present we are increasingly seeing careers which do not have traditional ties to professions
and companies and sectors; the so-called boundaryless careers.
Pressure on the working population to become more mobile and more flexible is also rising
steadily.
Firms are adapting new technologies and products and the working population must keep up
with this. International competition has increased and because no developed country wants to
fall back into the ranks of the undeveloped countries relying on raw materials ans unskilled
labour the need for greater levels of education and training over the lifespan is evermore
compelling.
Countries may have to work harder just to maintain their standards of living and individuals
must keep up with that in order to maintain their own earning.
As a consequence of this individuals run far more career risks and are forced in respect of
their careers to become competent players in order to be able to make use of the opportunities
which arise.
Career guidance is seen as a component of human resource and development in the so-called
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Risk Society (Beck, 1996)
Risk society meaning the flexibilisation of the labour force in this transition from an economy
dominated by industrial production to a service economy typified by increased globalisation.
The two most common forms of flexibilisation are:
1. Despecialisation of labour: employees must be able to be employed in several places.
This results in role uncertainty amongst employees, because the fixed descriptions of
their tasks and jobs are no longer the basis of their work. The organisation of work is
changing towards an organisation based on projects and processes rather then the
building blocks of jobs and positions.
Therefore job descriptions lose their meaning. In advertisements the required qualities
of the employee are more and more often being described in terms of personality traits
such as „dynamic‟, „willing to change‟, „capable of taking responsibility‟. Its
noticeable that these characteristics could at least also be interpreted as being capable
of dealing with role uncertainty.
2. Flexible contracts for employment. Although the full-contract job is still dominant the
flexible labour relations are rapidly catching up.
The consequence of this can be uncertainty about livelihood. This uncertainty is,
according to the trade-union in the Netherlands (1996), primarily caused by the fact
that the relationship between employers and employees in term of social roles and the
regulated rights is becoming unclear.
The second reason for this uncertainty is the fact that it is becoming increasingly
difficult for employees to imagine a professional career. Everybody will be
unemployed and/ or required to retrain for shorter or longer periods of time. In
combination with the cutbacks in welfare state, this fact will lead to uncertainty in
livelihood.
According to Beck and Giddens the advent of the Risk society is the logical consequence of
the modernisation process. The new meanings being produced in the process of modernisation
bear the characteristics of scientific and commercial rationality. These are very temporary,
there is no relation between them and they have taken out pf national and local meaning
(“have been disembedded”).
The continuous scientific and technological development in combination with a market
economy focused on growth and innovation are resulting in a rapid changing world which can
no longer be made transparent or manageable within old cultural and social context. The
resultant ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty in social interaction place pressure on the
individual to determine his/her own direction and construct personal identity.
If the individual is successful at this, the uncertainty over role and livelihood can be
transformed into a new prospective of the future and new opportunities.
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The new framework of career guidance is aimed to help and give guidance to the individual of
becoming an actor in his/her own biography.
Achieving this so-called reflexive biography (Giddens 1991) in the field of work and
working means that individuals must not only acquire specific career skills but must also
formulate answers to three questions:
1. What sort of person am I, in respect of motivation, interests, strengths and
weaknesses? The so-called personal identity
2. Given my qualities, in what area of work can I make a meaningful contribution to
others? Determine a course in the labour system
3. In what type of vocational role can I establish a meaningful exchange with others?
Work identity
Ad. 1: in the industrial society the formation of the identity took place under relatively
unconscious socialising effects of the various institutions. Social context was coherent and the
individual could experience itself as a single undivided personality.
Today‟s society has a pluriform cultural context, the socialising forces are no longer
unequivocal and there‟s a wide range of possible forms of existence, the individual is no
longer easily able to get to know him/herself as a coherent fully crystallised person but far
more as a collection of sub-identities.
The individual today is permanently faced with the task of both critically dealing with self-
knowledge and, at the same time, organising the various components of his/her own
personality into an effective whole.
The various components of the personality must be ordered, in a manner that is emotionally
experienced as satisfying and meaningful, into a single whole which suits one‟s personal
biography. And this is not a one-off exercise, but a continuously repeating task. New
experiences and old, recurring memories all require attention and processing in one‟s self-
concept and one‟s own personal biography.
Ad. 2: just as the individual must learn to consciously deal with the information of his/her
own identity, it must learn also to consciously demarcate that section of the world of work
which ties in with his/her own identity. This process of demarcation was gradually developed
in the past during the socialisation process. As time had come the individual had made an
orientation towards a limited component of the world of work (Gottfredson 1981)and he/she
could make a choice. With the blurring of the occupational structure and the ever weaker
relationship between vocation and job opportunities in labour organisations it has become
extremely difficult to gain an understanding of the opportunities for work which suit one‟s
own personality merely by looking at representations of occupations. The link during the
youth‟s education period to the world of work is becoming more and more indirect.
And also determining a course can be hindered by a lack of coherence in one‟s self-concept
(Super 1990; Van de Loo 1992). The various sub-identities can each point towards divergent
career opportunities.
Ad. 3: today individuals must take responsibility for their work allocation. This means they
must develop his/her own work or working identity.
Working identity can be defined as a structure of network of meanings (in the philosophical
sense!) in which the individual combine personal motivation, interest and capacities,
consciously, with acceptable working roles.
The individual will be constantly confronted with the need to reflect on this meaning structure
and to make changes as necessary.
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The World of Work
A tool for determine your course in the labour system means that one way or another there
must be information gathered about the world of work. A representation of this world of work
is needed in order to be able for the individual to orientate itself in this world of work.
In order to break through the instrumental attitude towards work (meaning only be able to see
work as a means of acquiring an income) a new framework has been developed presenting
work as a human activity aimed at satisfying shared necessities of life; meaning necessities as
conditions that have to be fulfilled for people to continue to live.
The meaning of work and our understanding of work are the basis for this new representation
of the world of work.
The classification has three levels.
1. the areas of work
2. the types of work
3. the work fields
1. The areas of work.
14 areas are formulated and based on the shared needs of society it starts with the
basic necessities of live: food, buildings, clothing, health & care.
But these basic necessities are not in themselves an adequate condition since they
cannot exist in isolation. In the areas of work themselves there is need for raw
materials, resources (plants, animals, energy sources) , equipment and machines and
means of transport So there are also areas of work that correspond with these shared
needs for means and resources: natural environment, energy & raw material,
implements & apparatus and infrastructure & transport.
In addition a number of general conditions must be fulfilled in order to allow the work
in the areas of work (and society as a whole) to function properly. Areas of work
correspond with these general conditions too. Areas of work within the general
conditions are: information & communication, upbringing & education, state, safety &
security, art, culture & science, employment & economy and leisure.
The total collection of areas of work can be presented as a concetric model: the iner
circle contains the areas of work aimed at satisfying basic needs, the middle circle
contains the area of work in which the means are provided that make it possible to
meet the primary needs and the outer circle contains the areas of work in which the
general conditions are fulfilled.
2. the second classification: types of work
The universal nature of the types of work can be traced back to two factors:
- The production and distribution of goods and services poses a complex and
practical problem for persons concerned: how can we do this as well and as
cheaply as possible?
- The solution of complex practical problems involves the cyclical process that
takes place according to a fixed pattern: first conceptualisation, analysis and
design (research and development) then identification of the tasks and means,
subsequently planning and organisation, acquisition of means, implementation
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and distribution. Evaluation completes the cycle and provides the impetus for
the next cycle.
So 8 types of work can be identified. Indepent entrepreneurship has been added as the
ninth type of work.
The types are:
1. research and development
2. production
3. control
4. logistics
5. purchase, sales, PR and marketing
6. personnel and organisation
7. administration
8. management
9. independent entrepreneurship
3. The result: 126 work fields
A work field is a particular type of work performed in a particular area of work.
The form a matrix; each work field includes occupations, jobs and corresponding
courses that share the same area and type of work.
The concept of work fields also reflects the fact that most people form a preference in
the course of their psychological development for a given vocational field rather than
for a given occupation.
Powerful Learning Environment
The learning process necessary for establishing a work identity is a process that can be
characterised as higher order learning.
It requires a learning situation in which new knowledge is actively (and interactively)
embedded in or related to previously acquired knowledge and in which the learner is
encouraged in an oriented manner to deploy the relevant thinking and learning activities
which could result in meaningful learning.
Such a environment should be designed. Six principles for designing such learning situations
are:
1. functional: as far as possible the learning situation match the situations and
circumstances in which the acquired knowledge should be used or applied (at a later
state)
2. true to life: the learner must constantly experience what he/she can or cannot do with
the knowledge acquired and in what situations and in which way he can use the skills
learned
3. activity: the learning environment must encourage the learner with the content of the
acquired knowledge in a interactive manner, focused on integration
4. behaviour models/ coaching: the lecturer must be an expert in the field and a coach
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5. self-learning: this is not achieved by teaching meta-cognitive tricks (although such
tricks can valuable in themselves) but by increasing having the learner take
responsibility for his/her own learning process
6. understanding the own competence: not only should there be systematic attention to
(learning) pleasure and motivation of the learners, but a system of tools should be
present which give the learners a clear view on their own increased individual
competence, which enables them to develop a growing understanding of their own
capacities.
If one is willing to design the powerful learning environment it will have tremendous impact
on the educational system. By the redesigning of the system one could start with creating this
kind of environment.
Implementation of Career Guidance
Recently Kidd (1996) presented a model for career guidance on the level of the individual.
Career guidance should comply with the following requirements:
a. Career guidance must respond to purpose and direction of the career. The starting
point for further investigation lies in the values, lifestyle and life-roles of the
individual
b. Career guidance must be focused on developing skills, with a view to planning one‟s
own biography and negotiating on this basis, as well as focusing on the attitude of the
employee in respect of changes and on the knowledge and understanding of the
individual personality and personal situation
c. Career guidance must be contextual. This relates to an understanding of the career
opportunities in organisations in a broad way. The basis ingredient for career planning
is an up to date data on career development in the broadest sense and following the
demand and deployment of personnel.
d. Career guidance must be interactive. Account must be taken of the relationships
between individuals and organisations and their mutually contrasting interests. The
individual must acquire skills to negotiate on his/her own career development
e. Career guidance must have a time perspective. This includes both looking back at the
past and looking forward to future possibilities. The capacity to systematically reflect
on experiences and actions undertaken is fundamental, with a view to the changing
labour market
f. Career guidance must focus attention on career flexibility. On the one hand this
relates to the capacity to handle material and psychological uncertainty and on the
other hand the confidence to dare to negotiate about one‟s own working conditions.
Interfacing Labour Market and Education.
The transition phase of the individual from education to labour market is becoming more
complex. In order to make the transition successful career guidance should be applied.
The individual face both more choices and increasingly complex choices both in the
educational system as in the labour market.
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In order to be able to make these choices actor competences, transition competences and
working competences should be developed; this means career guidance should be applied to
the individual.
Career guidance for all is meant; not for the few on a high educated level.
Career guidance must provide accurate information on future educational options; develop
individuals understanding and realistic knowledge of the work of world and assist them to
make satisfying job choices.
Career guidance result in greater self-worth, a growth in motivations, decision making skills
and work commitment. This is the positive connection between career guidance and labour
productivity.
ELLY HENDRIXK
Short-term expert
Career Guidance and Counselling
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