Careers Guidance and Job Placement Services: The Missing Link Between Education and Employment

Abstract

This chapter will promote the view that without well-functioning careers guidance services for young people and adults, the benefits of other components of TVET reform cannot be fully realized, and a country’s ability to achieve Goal 8 of the Sustainable Development Goals is undermined. Targets 8.5 and 8.6 call for full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, as well as a substantial reduction in the proportion of young people not in employment, education, or training. However, access to decent work requires more than equal access to education, a reformed curriculum, and fairer governance. For people from poor communities, the obstacles are often insurmountable: a lack of social capital prevents them from negotiating their way through opaque recruitment practices where family connections are more important than qualifications or aptitude, and information on job vacancies and selection criteria are the preserve of the well-informed middle classes.

Careers guidance brings more benefits than simply smoothing and shortening the transition from school to employment for young people. In today’s fast-changing, often precarious and turbulent, labor market, workers are expected to change not just job but also career path more than once in their working lives. Periods of retraining or up-skilling are increasingly necessary to remain resilient during economic downturns, leading to frequent movement between education and employment and between jobs. Access to careers guidance is important for workers of all ages as a means of reacting positively to labor market trends and reducing periods of unemployment.