Claire Murphy (Career Guidance Counsellor from Psychmed Analytics) discusses the Innovative Career Guidance project which she has been a part of and which has been funded by the European Union.
Innovative Career Guidance is an EU commissioned project with six partners from Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium and Finland. This project was designed in response to the increased need for career guidance in post-Covid Europe. Many Europeans suffered job losses, uncertainty in their jobs and careers and in some cases, a lack of direction and purpose in their lives due to isolation and anxiety which resulted from Covid lockdowns and working remotely for extenuated periods of time.
Strengthening career guidance
This project aimed to support Europeans in their career journey to reskill, upskill and engage in lifelong learning so that they could engage in successful career and work transitions through identifying their career values, needs, wants, aptitudes and strengths.
Interestingly, many of the project countries shared similar problems and challenges with regards to career guidance. Although many people often face barriers in their careers, they are not always equipped with the tools and knowledge to overcome these barriers at an individual level and be their own agency for change. Sometimes these barriers can only be overcome through societal, economical, educational policy changes. These challenges include a lack of access to good quality career guidance and labour market information, a lack of user-friendly information pertaining to apprenticeships, university courses, career pathways and skill acquisition and in some cases a lock of employment opportunities specific to the geographical location.
New approaches
When people experience challenges, whether they are made redundant, laid off or simply want to change their career for a variety of reasons, It is essential that the person is equipped with the necessary skills to transition into a new career easily and readily on their own time as opposed to when they are forced to through an employer.
This project examined different methodologies including:
- the ‘constructivist patchwork’ method which was created by David Bourne, a French occupational psychologist;
- Lego serious play, which was introduced to project by Peppino Franco from Italy;
- The Anti-Fragility approach which was drawn from our Spanish partner; and
- Career guidance for social justice approaches which support people to access education and decent work.
Challenges in accessing career guidance
We also reflected that the lack of qualified career guidance counsellors has prevented Career Guidance from becoming socially transformative for many Europeans. While the EU has done a lot to address these issues such as funding projects like this, more needs to be done.
Although the Covid pandemic and subsequent shutdowns caused many problems, one of the advantages of these lockdowns was that many career guidance services and resources were transferred online. This has the potential to increase access to career guidance services across Europe. Many educational providers also started to offer online courses which made some of these courses accessible to those who are unable to physically attend universities or training colleges. Online education does however have limitations and may not suit every learner.
Key elements of the Innovative Career Guidance project
This Innovative career guidance project contains the four main elements which are of interest to career guidance practitioners. All of these are available from the project’s outputs page.
- Descriptions of national Career Guidance polices and systems. I found this particularly interesting as some agencies provide very specific career guidance initiatives to very specific groups of people e.g. women, refugees. While some of these polices are antiquated, they help any career guidance practitioner to better understand the provision of career guidance and what needs to change to allow everyone to access career guidance.
- A handbook for career guidance professionals. This addresses the development of employability through skills data, personal branding, empathy and leaderships skills. There are also some interesting facts about which industries are finding it hard to employ staff and which industries are set to become major employers in the future for example the clean energy sector is forecast to create millions of jobs all over Europe in the future.
- Training modules. These address a wide range of different concepts including addressing fragility, making use of Ikagi, using Lego for serious play and the patchwork constructivist, career counselling tips and pedagogical approaches that can be used.
- Digital toolkit. This is focused on practical resources which can be used to ensure diversity and inclusion in career guidance practices. This section features information on providing career guidance to those with disabilities and to those who do not have English as their first language and how educational systems can adapt to the dynamic world of work and ensure that generations are well educated and well equipped to successful navigate the fluctuating labour markets for years to come.
Reflections
This project contains a lot of practical and useful information for anyone who has just started their journey as a career guidance practitioner and for those who are more experienced practitioners wishing to update their knowledge on more modern career guidance themes such as personal branding.
No matter what stage of your career practitioner journey you are on, there really is something for everyone so have a look at the project website and feel free to give your opinion in the comments section below.
I would like you to invite to take a look at the project here so that you can read about our research and evidence-based approaches to providing better career guidance:
