News

This article was co-authored by Andrea Csirke, Claudia Liebeswar, Alice Müllerová, Karen Schober and Tomáš Šprlák and was published in the proceedings of the 2019 IAEVG International Conference. 

In the article, the development of a Mentoring Programme supporting career guidance practitioner’s (CGP) certification is presented, together with specific examples of designed tools and activities including a certification framework and self-assessment tools. A goal of the mentoring programme is to support experienced career guidance practitioners to comply with the requirements of a quality standard and quality assurance systems and to prepare them for an individual certification process as CGP.

The project started with data collection in an analytical paper about quality assurance systems and their implementation in the European partner countries who participated in the project followed by the design of a preliminary version of the programme that underwent two phases of testing. The final version of the Mentoring Programme contains 21 different modules including teaching guidelines together with worksheets for participants and guidelines for mentors. It is designed as a flexible “cafeteria model” in order to best fit the needs of the different target groups. Feedback from Austrian, Czech, German, and Slovak practitioners will be presented.

The Mentoring Programme and the tools for a certification framework were developed within the ERASMUS+ Strategic Partnership “Improving the implementation of quality assurance in career guidance (QUAL-IM-G)”. Nine partner organisations from seven European countries were involved in the project (Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, UK) coordinated by Slovakia.

Full-text article available on this link.

Flexicurity, robotization, lifelong learning and mobility of labour across borders (national and sectoral) are the main drivers for change and innovation. This not only challenges where and how we work but also when and why we work. In addition, aging Europe results in a working population that has to work longer, asking for more awareness and guidance towards ‘second careers’. Added to this is the trend of personalising the learning needed for staying tuned in to the labour market. In short: our work paradigm is in transition, since the importance of jobs is fading and the importance of careers emerges. Career guidance and career guidance professionals are important beacons of light in facilitating this transition for both organisations and individuals. What is needed is a clear vision from an educational, social and economic point of view of how to assure the quality of those involved in guiding people into the labour market of the future.

On February 15, 2019, the Dutch professional association for career guidance professionals and jobcoaches – Noloc – organized an international conference on Careers in transition and the need for assuring the quality of career guidance professionals. The conference took place in ‘s Hertogen-bosch, the Netherlands, as part of the ErasmusPlus project QUAL-IM-G. This project focuses on improving the implementation of quality assurance in career guidance, and includes partners from the Netherlands, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the UK, Germany, Austria, and Norway.

At the conference, both national and international speakers presented contributions on the role of career guidance and competent, qualified career guidance professionals as beacons of light in a rapidly changing European labour market.
The conference offered a platform to discuss the trends across Europe, to present best practices and create more clarity on present dynamics in work, learning and guidance. Its objective was to link the need of a changing labour market paradigm with the need that this transition should be guided by competent, qualified career guidance professionals.
Attended by over 80 policy makers, academics, career professionals and representatives from a diversity of organisations, the conference provided many useful insights in sharing expertise and experiences from a variety of angles.

Martin Soeters MSc, working for the Dutch ministry of Education, culture and sciences, shared his view on the lifelong learning (policy) context of career guidance in the Netherlands. He stated the importance of adult learning as a driver for individual self-fulfilment, economic development and social inclusion. Adult learning can help people acquire the basic skills (literacy, numeracy and digital skills) they need to take part in a transforming society, which helps society to become more inclusive. The Dutch policy goal for adult learning is to improve the learning culture: it should be second nature for everyone to develop their skills further. An important element is to reach out to adults, to support and activate them to make the right decisions to improve (basic and) professional skills. That is where career guidance can make the difference.

Prof. Dr. Judith Semeijn, holder of the Noloc chair on Career management at the Open University of the Netherlands, argued in her keynote address that career management is becoming a strategic asset for sustainable organisations. Changing working patterns require changing HR solutions, with more focus on career guidance. This not only has consequences for the professional development of career guidance professionals, but also for the underlying quality standards of the profession as a whole.

Dr. Jos Sanders, professor at the HAN University of Applied Sciences, stressed in his keynote address that the current labour market changes require innovative guidance instruments for employees. His keynote presentation showed how skills mismatches occur and how they are barely resolved in modern day’s highly dynamic labour market. Precarious workers especially need professional and high quality guidance in maintaining their fit to ever changing jobs and employment. Career checks are one way of providing workers with individualized labour market information, and helping them in assessing their sustainability regarding their employability and careers.
Mr. Tomáš Šprlák, President of the Slovak professional association for career professionals and overall coordinator of the QUAL-IM-G project, introduced this project on improving the implementation of quality assurance in career guidance. The results of the project are the basis of the development of national quality assurance mechanisms in Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.

In her keynote address, Dr. Siobhan Neary, Head of ICeGS, the research institute on career guidance of the University of Derby (UK), elaborated further on the QUAL-IM-G research conducted on the European perspective on quality assurance in career guidance. She explored the findings from the synthesis report for the QUAL-IM-G project. In doing so, she introduced the Hooley and Rice (2018) model which differentiates between systems and frameworks connecting drivers for change and the degree of provider autonomy. Using an audit template 21 submissions were examined from seven countries. The outcomes from the research contributed to the development of a mentoring programme, a certification/accreditation procedure, a quality development framework for practitioners and an audit procedure for providers, all being outputs of the QUAL-IM-G project.

Dr. Erik Haug, associate professor at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences introduced the way Norway is developing towards a national quality framework on career guidance. The Norwegian government has decided to develop a lifelong holistic quality framework for career guidance. In his keynote presentation, Dr. Haug presented the policy background for such an initiative, the process of developing it, and content of the preliminary framework, which was launched in mid-February 2019.

In an inspiring workshop, Dr. Aniek Draaisma, researcher at the Open University of the Netherlands, introduced an holistic quality approach on student oriented career guidance in vocational education. Her research shows that this not an easy thing to realize. Faced with a traditional teacher oriented school structure, both curricula, teacher orientation towards students and the organisation of schools itself should be considered as inseparable and intertwined elements. Given the rapidly changing labour market, an holistic quality approach towards career oriented education is needed to provide students the tools, instruments and self-insights required for realizing a successful career. Providing teachers with career guidance skills proves to be a crucial aspect of this process.

Jouke Post, MSc, researcher at Saxion University of Applied Sciences, stated in his contribution that evidence exists that the training and competence of career guidance professionals make an essential contribution to the development of high-quality career guidance services. This implies that in the process of enhancing the quality and professionalization of career professionals, services and organizations the (continuous) education of career professionals plays an important role. In his workshop, Post explored various ways to create more coherence and quality in the work and education of career professionals.

In a joint Dutch-Belgian workshop focusing on best practices in innovative career instruments, Dr. Derk-Jan Nijman of HAN University of Applied Sciences, and Dr. David Meulemans from VDAB, Belgium, shared experiences on how to effectively implement career vouchers as instruments for labour market transition. The workshop presented preliminary results of a study on the effects of introducing career checks in the Netherlands, and compared the Dutch approach on career checks with the Belgian approach on career vouchers.

As another example of best practice, Jeroen Bregman MSc, member of the Executive board of Noloc, presented the process in which the two Dutch institutes issuing quality labels for career guidance practitioners in the Netherlands – Noloc and CMI – are working towards introducing a Dutch national quality label for career guidance practitioners by July, 2020. As part of this process, CMI as an organization will integrate into Noloc, and thereby cease to exist.

During two workshops, the importance of quality assurance of both career guidance practitioners and career guidance providers was presented by demonstrating the results of the QUAL-IM-G project. In one workshop, the results of the development and piloting of a mentor training programme in order to prepare guidance practitioners towards their certification were presented. Also, a concept of building an overall certification development framework for guidance practitioners was introduced. In the other workshop, preliminary results on the development of quality assurance implementation tools for guidance providers were presented. The tools presented focus on a quality development framework for organizations providing guidance and the development of an audit/labelling procedure for providers of career guidance.

In the final keynote address, the concluding speaker of the conference, Guus van Weelden MSc, a member of the Executive Board of UWV, the Dutch unemployment service, stressed the importance of cooperation between UWV and both Noloc and Oval, being major players in the field of career guidance from the perspective of career professionals and career service providers, respectively. In his contribution, Van Weelden emphasized that proven guidance methods provide a solution in effectively dealing with unemployment. The common goal in this collective process is to provide effective, qualitative career guidance to different groups with different needs.

By Jeroen Bregman

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.

Certifying body: FECBOP – Fédération Européenne des Centres de Bilan et d’Orientation Professionnelle / European Federation of Centres of Career Guidance and Bilan de Competences

The quality standard and labelling procedure were developed by the European network of career guidance providers influenced by the “bilan de compétences“ (skills audit) methodology.

Skills audit („bilan de compétences“) came into existence in France as a tool helping the organizations and employees to analyze their knowledge, skills, abilities, competences and motivations and prepare a realistic career goal and an action plan. First centres of the bilan de compétences were created in 1986. A national network of inter-institutional centres for the bilan de compétences (CIBC) was created in 1989.

Through different projects the methodology slowly spread to other countries (Italy, Belgium, Germany) and in 2004 a European association of providers was created. With the assistance of the French network of CIBCs the European Standard “Qualité Europe Bilan de Compétences” was created. Its goal is to maintain and protect a common quality level between providers and to differentiate the service from other similar services.

The label is delivered by the European Labelling Committee that is an elected body within FECBOP with 5 members (currently 1 from France, 2 from Italy, 1 from Belgium, 1 from Czech republic).

The quality assurance process is as follows:

1. The organization sends the candidature sheet to the FECBOP Executive Bureau of the Federation. This sheet contains basic information about the candidate (activities, statistical data, motivation for obtaining the label).
2. The Executive Bureau assigns the auditor: 3 auditors are currently working for FECBOP, trained by the French network of skills audit centres. The auditor sends the candidate the necessary documents (Audit agreement, Guide for internal audit and requirements for the agenda of the audit visit. Internal audit guide allows the organization to prepare for the audit visit and collect all necessary evidence and send it beforehand to the auditor.
3. The auditor agrees with the candidate organization on the time schedule (date of the visit, deadline for submission of internal audit guide, foreseen date of the meeting of the meeting of European Labelling Committee (1-3 months after the audit)
4. The audit takes 2 days and contains meeting with an official representative, consultation of documents (final reports from bilan de competences, competence portfolios), consultation of the library of methods, meeting with a group of beneficiaries and with a group of counsellors.
5. The auditor prepares the audit report within 15 days after the audit. Draft of the audit report is sent to candidate for eventual comments and corrections (if necessary) and then submitted to the European Labelling Committee.
6. The European Labelling Committee meets and decides about awarding the quality label (usually 1-3 months after the audit). The auditor presents the report and additional questions can be asked by the committee members to the candidate during the meeting.

Currently, 25 centres in 8 countries successfully obtained the quality label and 5 – 7 audits are realized every year by FECBOP auditors. The audit is realized every 5 years.

FECBOP quality standard is available here. The standard is used mainly in countries with links to French culture (Italy, Belgium) or in countries, where it was spread through projects (Slovakia, Czechia, other CEE countries). In almost all cases it occupies the vacuum caused by the lacking national system of QA in CG. The standard is not mandatory (except for France and some specific cases). Its recognition is highly dependant on the country.

What are the most challenging aspects of the quality standard to implement?

Analysis realized during the QUAL-IM-G project (interviews with FECBOP auditors) revealed, that the following aspects are deemed as the most difficult to implement by skills audit providers:

Methodological issues (NB: these issues are in some cases specific to the methodological nature of the skills audit as used within the FECBOP network of providers):

• Multidisciplinary character of the provided service: the quality standard requires the centre to have a multidisciplinary team of providers, whereas many centres tend to employ counsellors with specific backgrounds (e.g. psychologists) which results in a rather homogenous staff of counsellors (from the point of view of their qualification). This is then often reflected in the methodology that is used predominantly in the guidance work done by the centre (e.g. too much focus on psychological assessment).
• Insufficient focus or on labour market exploration: similar and often connected to previous point: some providers tend to focus on analysis of personal characteristics of the beneficiary (interests, personality…) and do not connect this information sufficiently with the socio-economic context of the beneficiary. The career goals that result from the skills audit can then be too broad or disconnected from the global situation of the beneficiary.
• Effective implementation of the portfolio or other documentation approaches: Identification and documentation of the competences of the beneficiary are often approached superficially – often because the providers do not completely understand and see the added value of it.
• Development of career management skills and active role of the beneficiary: Some centres tend to focus on expert analysis of client’s interests, personality traits and acquired skills and knowledge. This is especially the case if they work with the low skilled with the objective of matching them to appropriate job (if the PES are financing the service). Providers rarely use explicit pedagogical framework (CMS framework, identification of needs of the beneficiary in term of CMS development, individual or group activities with defined learning objectives).
• Common glossary and internal methodological guide: lack of common understanding of different terms (knowledge, skills, competence, interest, career management skills…). Non-existence of common methodological guide, that would formalize the process and could be used by newly employed counsellors.

Organizational issues:

• Evaluation, training and development of staff: non-existent procedure for the identification of training needs, elaboration of training plan. This area is often reduced to informal internal meetings for sharing of experiences, without tangible results or capitalization of these exchanges.
• Satisfaction and impact evaluation: insufficient of inexistent system for monitoring satisfaction of the beneficiaries or impact of the provided service (3-6 months after the service).
• Continuous quality improvement: Providers rarely implement mechanisms for monitoring quality of the service and collecting feedback (e.g. statistical treatment of satisfaction questionnaires) to improve their service.
• Research and development: This activity is often neglected by the providers, mainly in cases where the guidance activity is new, project-based or occasional (dependent on public tenders…).
• General formalization of procedures: small centres seem to rely on informal processes and/or oral “tradition” in their practices. Guidance centres often don’t like procedures and are not accustomed to process management and quality assurance practice.

Policy-related issues:

• Voluntary participation of beneficiaries: in some countries skills audit is used as and ALMP measure and the beneficiary can face sanctions if he refuses the offer from the labour office to participate.
• Financial sustainability of the service: Guidance activity is often project-based or occasional (dependent on public tenders…).
• Networking, linking to other services: in some countries (especially in central and eastern Europe) the network of potential services in the field of lifelong learning, lifelong guidance or social support is weak or inexistent, given the lack of public funding.
• Link to systems of validation of non-formal and informal learning: in some countries these systems are insufficiently developed or inexistent.

Second partner meeting of the QUAL-IM-G consortium was held in Derby on 24th/25th May 2018. This meeting was hosted by iCeGS.

The current status of the O1 (Report on QA practices) with some preliminary findings was presented. Partners agreed, that the output will be enriched by following short case studies illustrating different good practices:

• Mentoring programme for candidates for accreditations provided by CMI (Netherlands)
• Certification process for career guidance practitioners by NOLOC (Netherlands)
• Quality development framework for organizations providing careers services by nfb (Germany)
• Audit and labelling procedure by FECBOP (EU)

The meeting allowed us to kick-off the work on other intellectual outputs of the project:

O2: Mentoring program for career guidance practitioners “Mentoring program” is not a “training program”: While it could lead to the development of new skills and competences, its primary goal is to prepare the counsellor for a QA procedure. Focus should thus be on the documentation of counsellors competences and development of practice. It should be connected to the self-assessment procedure. Partners decided, that the mentoring programme will be “content dependent”: it will be based on the most widely used quality criteria, as revealed by the analysis in O1.

O3: Certification procedure of career guidance practitioners The output will be content-independent (independent from specific quality standard). It will describe different stages of the certification procedures, and for every step it will provide examples of template documents. It could also provide recommendations and examples of good practice from partner countries.

O4: Quality development framework nfb has developed a very advanced quality development framework. It will serve as an inspiration for the development of the output, but will be adapted as necessary for the needs of the testing phase.

O5: Audit / labelling procedure The development will be similar to O3 and will lead to a development of a content-independent process (not tightly linked to any quality standard) that will include recommendations and may also include illustrative examples of good practice.