Learning for Careers

Knowing about the preferences, needs, and wishes of young people is an important precondition to successful career guidance policies and services. The European Training Foundation (ETF) and the UNICEF Europe and Central Asia Regional Office (ECARO), in collaboration with young people, conducted polls and held focus groups to understand the needs of young people aged 14-34 regarding career guidance. The study covered Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Young people want to learn for life, and career education and guidance that integrates life skills and career learning enables them to do this. Fit-for-purpose career guidance should ideally be: a systematic combination of structured career education programs (as part of curricula throughout formal education, to be able to reach whole generations), quality online self-learning and self-help opportunities; and person-centered career guidance service offered outside of school, both face-to-face and online.