Effective career guidance workshops give an input and motivation for further learning and can help to avoid making ill-considered decisions on further career and education. It of great importance due to recent high unemployment rates among young people. According to statistics young people are falling behind the rest of society in the job market and are bearing the brunt of rising unemployment. Many young people leave education inadequately prepared for the world of work, lacking basic skills required for the workplace and with limited career guidance. There is a need for skills and education reform and improving training schemes for young people so that they are better prepared for the world of work. Youth unemployment is a concern for individuals and for society. In youth has a lasting impact on future career prospects and future earning potential. It further increases the vulnerability of young people to mental health issues such as depression and limits young people’s personal and skills development. The main aim of the project is to raise the quality of the process aimed to define capacities, aptitudes and professional interests of secondary/vocational schools students and adults, and conducting career guidance and career planning through creation of a modern (standardized on a representative group) modular system for analysis, diagnosis and education guidance of career that would support the work of career counselors. Project consortium consists of 5 partner institutions from 5 countries. WSEI (Poland) – Project Leader is a higher education institution (private university); Bahcesehir University (Turkey) is a higher education institution (non-state university); KADIS (Slovenia) is a service provider in the area of career guidance and HR; Associaciao Baobab (Spain) is a non-profit organization; Polish Psychologists’ Association (UK) is a registered charity. All partners are experienced and posses extensive knowledge in career guidance services, training, research, systems and strategies for the development of the Human Resources in the organizations, employing high class psychologists and career counselors. Project will be divided into the following phases, during which, the modular system will be developed: Phase 1 – Development of model of predispositions and leading competences for professions, Phase 2 – Development of modular system for diagnosis, analysis and education guidance for career, Phase 3 – Preparation of an on-line version of the tool, Phase 4 – Pilot testing, Phase 5 – Psychometric validation and tool standardization. Prince2 Methodology will be used. Project Leader will be responsible for managing and reporting on the project’s cost and deadlines throughout the duration of the project, for preparation of the description of each phase of project's implementation, planning of the timeline for each task, and resources needed to implement each project's task by the project team. Key results of the project: model of predispositions and leading competencies for professions, modular system for diagnosis, analysis and education guidance of career, handbook for diagnostic tool, personal portfolio for participant career, methodical guidebook for career counselor. Project will trigger modernization of career guidance services offered by European institutions on the market.
The aim of the project was to create a modern tool to allow diagnosis and analysis of the future careers of young people, as well as provide them with appropriate indicators for their further education path. The final products as a result the project implementation are: 1.Career Tree tool.It is a set of diagnostic and support of counseling tools. The diagnostic part contains six inventories for dimensions examining which are relevant to educational and vocational decisions, a battery of cognitive tests and a survey questionnaire regarding the certificates, qualifications and educational and professional achievements. The Career Tree is based on an empirical attitude to tests creation. The Career Tree attends to the needs diagnose, interests and educational and vocational disposition of people aged 15-25 planning their career paths. A set of questionnaires and tests allow to receive a multidimensional diagnosis. The automatically created report provides guidance for the interpretation of results and orientation of advice on career planning, educational and vocational part. The Career Tree also contains additional tools like automatically generated CVs in the Europass standard and creating a portfolio (contains education and career achievements in the career path), that supporting the individual career path of testing people. A set of questionnaires, tests and counseling tools, included under common name Career Tree help career advisors with supporting young people in cyclical and current development planning. 2.CV and portfolio manual - tools included in the Career Tree diagnostic package. The CaT portfolio is useful in a job search and ensures the possibility of presentation of “learning outcomes gained during formal, informal, non-formal education” and career records. The portfolio is a list of the user’s competences related to career development (CV + CaT test results + other uploaded/filled e.g. images, photos, programming code, links to web pages). The portfolio is being created partly automatically after the CaT test user finishes the test. It means that data entered by the user during testing are uploaded and visible as a separate webpage with some data + empty fields with suggestions how to fill them. The link to the user’s individual portfolio may be sent to a potential employer for the recruitment purposes. 3. Handbook Career Tree The system of educational-vocational career diagnosis and counseling. In this book was describe the method a set of inventories,tests and questionnaires construction, supporting career planning counseling, bearing the common title Career Tree.It is a diagnostic tool handbook, which contains theoretical and technical bases, allows create diagnostic tool, aims and beneficiary diagnosis, reliability. 4. Handbook entitled Career Guidance. Theoretical assumptions and exemplary practices. It is a methodical handbook for career counselors includes theories and foundations of the developed method and practical tips regarding counseling process running. 5.The added value of the project is a handbook Multidimensional adaptive diagnosis in career planning. Design and psychometric adequateness of the Career Tree inventory tool. This book was developed in Polish, English and Spanish. In this book was described method of constructing the set of inventories and tests supporting the career planning process, bearing the common name Career Tree. The structure, psychometric adequateness and the way how to using the whole toolkit on the Internet available are presented. The first part presents the stages of the construction The Career Tree structure and the dimensions of the diagnosis that were included in the toolkit. The second part describes psychometric tests adequateness of the Career Tree package. Instructions how to use the Career Tree tools and rules for interpreting Career Tree's results in educational and vocational counseling, you can find in the handbook for career counselors entitled Career Tree. The system of educational-vocational career diagnosis and counseling, which is a summary of a part of the this book, supplemented with detailed description of results of individual scales. More detailed discussion of the nature of counseling and the tools used in it is included in the book Career Guidance. Theoretical assumptions and exemplary practices, which is a collection of methodological materials supporting career counselors’ work and enabling deepening knowledge about career planning. The Partnership 1. University of Economics and Innovation (Poland) – Project Leader; 2. Associaciao Baobab (Spain) non-profit organization; 3. KADIS (Slovenia) service provider in the area of career guidance and HR; 4. Bahcesehir University (Turkey) higher education institution; 5. Polish Psychologists’ Association (UK) is a registered charity. The products that were created as part of the project are available in 5 language versions: Polish, English, Turkish, Slovenian and Spanish.