Agora 10 Career Coaching Counsellors.

A brief
description of an innovative career coaching
project for young people

Erwin Kmmerer

1. Point of departure
The world of work is undergoing a radical process of transformation. Dynamic changes in the world
of work are producing new opportunities but also greater difficulties at the transition points between
school and work. Effective counselling and preparation of young people at the interfaces between
school and the world of work are becoming increasingly important. All the more so because, as a
rule, changes occur much faster in economic and industrial fields than in education, which leads to the
inherent danger that the gaps at the transition points will become wider.

By comparison with other countries, Austria has a high level of employment, low youth
unemployment and a differentiated range of upper secondary education opportunities. The availability
of full-time schools, vocational training routes (higher vocational, technical and commercial colleges)
and a multi-faceted system of dual training means that a high percentage of young people participate
in vocational education and training. However, the decline in the number of apprenticeships available
in the last few years has had a negative effect on transition from education to work. At the same time,
changes in the field of training e.g. the development of training courses for about 70 new
occupations in the last three years have led to a greater need for information and counselling.

2. Schemes and provision

The first step towards career guidance is taken within the education system itself. Early targeted
guidance and preparation for future training and career paths are offered in many fields. This is the
case in many lower secondary schools in particular the polytechnic schools, which have made
vocational counselling, vocational preparation and basic vocational education one of their core tasks.
Recent surveys have shown that they have thus been able to increase their rates of successful
transition.

In other fields there are many young people who, having finished compulsory education or dropped
out of subsequent training, face what is for them a relatively complicated and confusing training and
employment market without any structured counselling and preparation. This is the target group for
which fall-back schemes, in the form of training courses and foundations, have been developed
within the framework of the National Action Plan for Employment. However, these schemes are
relatively costly and of limited effectiveness, because of varying success in finding participants

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sustainable training places; moreover, they force young people to undergo long preliminary periods
of searching and waiting. This is good neither for their employability nor for their self-confidence.

3. STAP Styrian Action Plan for Employment

In Styria, the Land Ministry of Economics has developed a Styrian Action Plan for Employment
(Steirischer Aktionsplan fr Beschftigung, STAP). Providing an alternative to reactive
compensatory measures, it is designed to function as a series of active preventive measures and
projects aiming to strengthen both individuals and the economy. One of the main projects involves an
innovative regional plan for career coaching counsellors, developed by the Styrian Economic
Society (Steirische Volkswirtschaftliche Gesellschaft).

4. Career Coaching Counsellors

Career coaching counsellors are regional network agents whose job it is to contact young people
approaching the end of their full-time school careers and who have not yet received adequate
vocational guidance and preparation.

The project has the following basic principles and features:

(a) The best way of avoiding youth unemployment is not to let young people become unemployed
in the first place. Timely, process-based preparation of young people is the basis for a
successful transition between education/training and the labour market.
(b) Counselling, preparation and transition can never be handled exclusively by one system alone,
as many players are always involved: schools and the education system, employers, the training
and employment market, the environment shaping the young persons attitudes, family, peer
groups, institutions and finally, the young person himself or herself.
(c) Timely action and process-based counselling and preparation of young people should be
undertaken while they are still within the education or training system. This is a major factor in
successful integration into working life, but also in further development. Gaps and long waiting
or searching periods erode self-confidence, reduce placement chances and may generate a
feeling of failure. This can be prevented by achieving a seamless transition.
(d) Career coaching counsellors offer young people process-based support for their career choice
before they leave the school system. To this end, the following steps are taken:
(i) communication and co-operation with the regional school and education system, in order
to reach youngsters who are approaching the end of their compulsory education in good
time;
(ii) individual support for small groups or individuals adapted to personal needs;
(iii) encouragement to start thinking about their future lives and careers at an early stage;

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 (iv) encouragement to think about their strengths and potential with regard to future training
and career paths;
(v) information on regional and supra-regional training provision and job offers;
(vi) organisational assistance with finding practical training places, work familiarisation weeks,
and encounters with the world of work for personal orientation;
(vii) support for the development of strategies to seek training courses or jobs and intensive
preparation and training for applications and interviews;
(viii) communication and co-operation with personal and learning environments family,
school, regional activities, institutions;
(ix) support and information about courses for new occupations, training requirements,
entrance tests for colleges, etc.
(e) The career coaching counsellors do not have the task of creating new structures, nor do they
compete with existing institutions. They work at a network and development-oriented level with
all relevant institutions and actors, e.g. labour market services, the social partners, socio-
educational establishments, schools, information centres etc. Their process-based activity is
intended to complement the work of these institutions.
(f) Furthermore, through ongoing information and communication and through their personal
relations with employers, employees, young people, opinion-makers and others, career
coaching counsellors have an ongoing and lasting effect on the training and labour market. In
doing so, they seek to exploit and expand the skills and competence of regional institutions and
activists.

5. The first 10 months of the project

Since 1 November 1999, career coaching counsellors have been working in four regions of Styria
(four full-time posts), and they achieved the following results up to August 2000:
(a) support, counselling and provision of information to a total of 270 young people (including new
entrants who had just completed compulsory education);
(b) of these, about 240 received long-term or process-based support. About three quarters of
them were found places in both individual and small-group schemes. About one quarter
received support only in small groups of three to eight participants;
(c) some 30 youngsters sought last-minute support after June/July 2000 (the end of the school
year) and were given intensive coaching so that they could still find a training place in the
autumn;
(d) of the 240 young people who received long-term support, about two thirds (168) continued
with further training, and of these almost half gained an apprenticeship (80), one third continued
in full-time education, and the rest were transferred to other schemes;

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(e) 112 events were held in schools for the promotion of in-school career counselling (information
meetings and seminars).

In addition to this, there were 160 events, PR activities, about 200 personal contacts with employers
and more than 4 000 contacts with enterprises through written questionnaires and surveys.

Thus, the success rate of the project was considerably higher than that of the National Action Plan
schemes (about 30 %).

All in all, while this project was being prepared and implemented, youth unemployment in Styria fell
by about one third (-27 %) and the number of young people who failed to gain apprenticeships was
reduced by about two thirds (-60 %). These trends naturally cannot be attributed to one cause, but
the career coaching project did play an important part in achieving these results in the regions
concerned. What is more, the cost of this project was considerably lower that that of the
compensatory measures.

But what is really of importance is the fact that the young people succeeded in taking a successful
step towards their own future without disruptive breaks and gaps. Self-esteem and self-confidence
are one of the decisive prerequisites for a successful career, and the course is often set during the
first steps.

6. Criteria for the success of the project

The following factors seem to have been particularly important to the success of the project.
(a) providing early, process-based individual support for choosing an occupation;
(b) addressing and strengthening basic personal and vocational skills and potential;
(c) arousing interest and enthusiasm for future tasks;
(d) enabling insight, encounters and active participation in the real world of work;
(e) enhancing self-confidence and self-assurance through active reinforcement of strengths;
(f) open regional networking, linking the interfaces between school, the world of work, institutions,
families, etc.;
(g) flexibility in organisation, and a clear grasp of the responsibilities and basic functions of the work
of career coaching counsellors.

7. Academic evaluation
The first year of the project, which should be viewed as the pilot phase, has already shown a high
level of performance and effectiveness; it is now up to all those involved to collect, structure and
analyse the experience gained in all the regions, and to use it for future action and development
potential. Prof. Mag. Dr Erwin Kmmerer, of the Styrian Federal Institute of Education, is

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responsible for the academic evaluation of the project; under his supervision, feedback surveys
covering the clients (young people and their families), companies and enterprises were conducted in
all regions, and moderated workshops on qualitative evaluation were held.

Comprehensive documentation is being prepared on the first stage of the project (which ended on
31 August 2000); on the whole, the initial results show very positive feedback. At the beginning of
the second stage of the project, starting 1 September 2000, special emphasis is being put on
dissemination of the results of the first stage so that the foundations may be laid for the optimal
development and implementation of further action.

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