Case study: Noloc and CMI joining forces: towards one Dutch national quality framework for career guidance professionals

With her mission of improving both the quality of career guidance in the Netherlands as well as increasing the number of qualified guidance professionals, in 2011 Noloc implemented her own quality assurance framework for individual career guidance professionals. The ‘Noloc erkend’ quality mark nowadays is one of the two quality marks for individual career guidance professionals in the Netherlands. Some 1,500 career guidance professionals have obtained the Noloc quality mark (July 2018).

The standard has 6 main subjects:

• Education and skills in the field of people-oriented services (at least on level EQF-6)
• Relevant working experience in the field of career guidance, career advice, outplacement or work reintegration; still being active in this field / fields as a guidance professional
• Relevant theoretical and practical knowledge of careers, labour market and their interaction (gained through education, literature studies, working experience)
• Relevant theoretical knowledge and practical experience of methods, techniques and instruments that could be used in guiding candidates
• Mastering the most important competences of a career professional, coach and advisor: showing empathy, effective communication, reflection, advising and coaching
• Showing a professional attitude: reflecting on one’s own actions, acting ethically (according to the Noloc code of conduct), professional development, networking)

Noloc provides a checklist for candidates and for the auditors. Candidates need to hand in a curriculum vitae, a written casus and supporting documents showing proof of the required education and other requirements. Those documents are being judged by the assessor. In case the assessor has doubts whether the candidate fulfils the requirements, the files will be judged by a second assessor.

Besides the Noloc quality mark for career guidance professionals, the Career Management Institute (CMI) offers an additional quality mark for more experienced career guidance professionals. Some 360 of them have obtained the CMI quality mark ‘Register Loopbaanprofessional’ (July 2018). Noloc has adopted this CMI quality mark as the quality mark for her more senior members.

Agreeing that it would be better if there were one, strong national quality framework for career guidance professionals in the Netherlands, since the end of 2016 Noloc and CMI are in the process of looking for possibilities to join forces. The aim of this process is to develop a national quality standard for individual career guidance professionals on different levels of seniority and specialization.

In April 2018, Noloc and CMI agreed that from July 2020 on, there will be just one Dutch national quality framework for career guidance professionals based on the mutual strengths of both organizations. In order to reach this ambitious goal, it was also agreed that the Noloc and CMI organizations will merge, and the new quality framework will be carried out under the responsibility of Noloc. To guarantee the objectivity of the certification process of individual career professionals willing to obtain the new national quality mark – either Noloc member or not – a number of safety valves will be implemented.

In the following table , the cornerstones of the new Dutch quality framework are being described and compared with the current cornerstones of both the Noloc quality framework and the CMI quality framework.