Retracing our Roots: Cultivating the Future of Career Guidance and Counseling - a report of the 10th NICE Academy in Deventer, the Netherlands

Author: Jeanette Hammer

“Retracing our roots: Cultivating the Future of Career Guidance and Counseling” was the topic of the 10th NICE Academy in Deventer, the Netherlands, which I attended as part of an Erasmus+ mobility in September 2020. The organizers fed the Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the contents of the conference and based on this, AI suggested the title “Retracing our roots: Cultivating the Future of Career Guidance and Counseling”.

“In search of our roots: the future of education and career guidance”

And with that, we are already in the middle of the conference and the question of how the use of AI affects our work as educational and career counselors. In the keynote speech by Prof. Dr. Jaana Kettunen from Finland – who is also currently the president of the World Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance (IAEVG) – entitled “Keeping Pace with Digital Change”, she gave us a good overview of the development of digitalization to date, how different professions have changed as a result, and also what influence it has on our role as counselors. The good news is that, as things stand at present, we will not be replaced by artificial intelligence in the near future!

But let's go back to the beginning. The NICE Academy was created from two consecutive Erasmus+ projects and for 10 years now, an annual conference has been organized for us career guidance counsellors to exchange ideas at the European level. This year's conference was attended by 90 pracititioners from 22 European countries and a colleague from Hong Kong/China. Deventer is a lovely old Hanseatic city on the river IJssel. What was particularly interesting about the city tour was that Erasmus of Rotterdam, who gave his name to the Erasmus+ program, went to the Latin School here.

The conference started with a look back at the development of our profession, at the topics and challenges we are facing in the present and how our work could develop in the future.

From the various keynotes and workshops, I took away the following:

• In order to be prepared for today's job market, it is important to know about your skills – basic skills and transversal / transferable skills. In the course of this presentation, a practical tool from Austria – the Competence Kaleidoscope – was also mentioned.
• For a sustainable career, different indicators are important for each person, but basically, according to research results from our colleagues in Greece and the Netherlands, they can be broken down into three: health, happiness and productivity.
• For a sustainable career to work, the topic of lifelong learning is also important – not only for employees, but also for the company or organization.
• A reminder that we have to consider the person as a whole when providing advice and not just focus on individual aspects. Opportunities but also barriers arise from interacting in the respective living environment of our clients – therefore, taking into account the individual circumstances is an important aspect of the advice.
• When it comes to sustainable professional careers, it is not only the employee's responsibility, but the company or organization must also do its part. This aspect is particularly important in times of a shortage of skilled workers.

One part of the conference consists of keynote speeches, workshops, and presentations of various projects and studies. The other, equally important aspect is the networking opportunities with colleagues from different countries. At this conference, I particularly focused on the topic of green guidance/green jobs and exchanged ideas with colleagues from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Albania, and Kosovo. In the Lower Austrian Educational Guidance Network, we have been dealing with this topic since 2021 and have already gained practical experience through the project Green Jobs for you that we are implementing together with the Lower Austrian Department of Environment and Energy. Providing information about and raising awareness of climate-related occupations, what I can do for the environment in my specific work and which skills will be important in the future is becoming increasingly important in the labor market but also in people's lives. At the European level, an exchange of experiences and content from different projects is therefore important and necessary.

For me, participating in the conference was very enriching, I look positively into our professional future and would like to note here some findings and conclusions from participants and speakers at the conference:

• Careeer guidance is, so to speak, the “lubricant” for the ever faster changing labor market!
• In the future, it should be normal to go for a career check / job check at least once a year (like an annual dental check-up) and see what has changed in my job description, where there might be further training, whether my job still suits my circumstances, etc.!
• Quality and quality processes in guidance are important and need to be regularly reviewed / adapted / developed!
• Artificial intelligence is here to stay – this also applies to us as educational and career guidance specialists, and we must therefore keep up with developments!

The next NICE Academy will take place in 2025 with our colleagues in Malta, and perhaps one or the other of us would like to take part – information will be available on the NICE Academy website.

Jeanette Hammer – Network for education and career counseling in Lower Austria / Adult Education Centers Lower Austria