IAG WGCG launches the first career conversations

Career conversation 1 - (27 October 2023) - Digital technologies in career guidance

The world of work is changing rapidly owing to digital technologies, bringing forth both opportunities and challenges to career guidance: What can and should change?

Organised by the Inter-Agency Working Group on Career Guidance (IAG WGCG), which includes Cedefop, European Commission, ETF, ILO, OECD, UNESCO, and World Bank, this thematic informal exchange was the first in a series of online discussions about career guidance. The IAG agencies ILO, OECD and UNESCO presented some of their work, particularly for TVET and youth sectors and in relation to entrepreneurship. Interesting examples of public-private partnerships were also presented, and how private companies are contributing to the public good.  Cedefop supported the organisation of the series and participated as a speaker at the second career conversation dedicated to quality of career services on 15th of December.

The session featured Professor Jaana Kettunen, Vice director and research professor at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research (FIER) (also a core expert in Cedefop’s CareersNet). Jaana’s research revolves around career guidance practice and public policy development with a special interest on the design and use of information and communication technology in career guidance.

The session speakers shared insights on the impact of artificial intelligence and digital technologies on career guidance and how best to leverage the new opportunities and address challenges in different world regions that arise as a result. A number of topics were touched upon including the sheer volume of career information of varying types and qualities now available and the feasibility of digital innovations; the limits and benefits of platforms and technologies, including their revolutionary advantages and concerns about bias and representation, accessibility, and the potential for all clients, and also practitioners who work alongside technology and who are becoming adept at their use. Importantly, online services provide round-the-clock career information, and big data analytics offer new insights and more customised information, but countries embrace technology at different rates and ways, due to many factors, including their own challenges, traditions, and infrastructural contexts. Added to this are ethical practices, access and relevance issues, as young people in particular, are not always easy to reach in the ways and spaces where public career platforms and services are set up. Furthermore, despite young people being raised in the age of AI and advanced technologies, youth services need to pay attention to these issues to address the specific needs, profiles, and preferences through better outreach. Importantly, there is still a need for services provided onsite and using human practitioners.

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Career conversation 2 - (15 December 2023) - The quest for quality in career guidance

Organised by the Inter-Agency Working Group on Career Guidance (IAG WGCG), which includes Cedefop, European Commission, ETF, ILO, OECD, UNESCO, and World Bank, this second ‘career conversation’ webinar aimed to share insights on critical issues and diverse paths to understanding and ensuring quality in lifelong guidance and career development support services. A main aim was to draw attention to make a case for developing ways to ensure quality of career services based in evidence, continuous improvement, and good practices in systems development as well as monitoring and evaluation. This was addressed alongside the urgency as well as the continuing difficulty of ensuring access to good quality services based on diverse service contexts, targeting users’ needs, and aimed at the process of career development -  in a world where structural adjustments are constant and where there are legitimate concerns among governments and social partners about labour shortages and upskilling demands.

Beyond the increased scrutiny on career services, this labour market situation often adds pressure on adults to secure work without consideration of differing levels of career readiness, to manage their position in the labour market, and to continuously upskill. For youth and young adults in different circumstances, the pressure is greater on acquiring career skills, finding career pathways, and navigating change and transitions – despite their diverse needs, barriers and distance from the labour market and extent of access to lifelong learning. 

There are also more  publicly and privately run all-age online platforms and career services that potentially open access to career information and advice, but these resources can be hard to interpret and overwhelming for service users who are at different career stages. At the same time, it is unclear if online services are used at appropriate points and if they are sensitive to diverse needs, and if or how quality of the platforms is assessed. This is particular important in relation to the use of scarce resources. The session featured Sareena Hopkins, the Executive Director of the Canadian Career Development Foundation (CCDF), who has led strategic initiatives both nationally in Canada and globally. Together with the session’s participating IAG agencies and their experts working at Cedefop, ILO, OECD, and UNESCO, Sareena discussed the leading issues of the session’s theme: conceptualising quality, defining, and articulating agreed context-sensitive standards that prioritise career development; making use of policy and competency frameworks; training for career practitioners in different roles and others involved in the field; development of appropriate outcomes focused indicators vs less helpful ones;  the importance of using diverse sources as evidence in improving services, and more. She underlined the need for meaningful metrics, to make use of the growing base of knowledge and evidence on good career guidance practices and considering service users’ needs in light of the life changes they are hoping for, balanced with the needs of the economy and of employers. The IAG agencies briefly showcased some of their ongoing work.

Drawing on past and current work, developed over decades and often in cooperation with partner agencies and expert networks such as CareersNet, Cedefop’s Cynthia Harrison focused on how Cedefop work supports professionalising the career field in the EU context, including policy reference tools, competency frameworks for career practitioners in different job roles, appropriate outcomes indicators and innovative methodologies that assess how people can benefit from career services through capturing intermediate change. This effort aims to trigger collection and use of evidence for service improvement and fostering agreement in the EU on common grounds for comparing good policy practices. She suggested that a well-thought-out, inclusive, updated and evidence-informed monitoring and evaluation approach, targeting suitable individual, organisational, community and labour market outcomes, involves, and can serve, all system stakeholders. This can also build a strong case for investing in suitable career services online including self-help tools, and offline, especially providing continuous training and support for career practitioners, who need to balance their important roles in relation to the demands on them. This is  particularly important in the digital transition, where staying in touch with skills and labour market changes has become more challenging than ever.

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