Case studies

Europass is European initiative with the overarching objective to increase the transparency of qualifications and to promote mobility of workers across European countries. Europass aims to support learners, job seekers and workers to make their competencies and knowledge better understood across Europe. Respectively, Europass is a very useful tool in the hands of guidance professionals, educational staff and employers. To this end, Europass offers tools such as the Europass CV, the Europass Language Passport, the Europass Mobility, the Europass Certificate Supplement, and the Europass Diploma Supplement, and follows an open access system approach that also facilitates policy developments related to the transparency of competencies and qualifications.

EURES is a cooperation network between public employment services of all European Member States, active in 32 countries. It provides information, advice and recruitment services for the benefit of workers, employers and any citizen wishing to benefit from the principle of free movement. Services are provided through EURES Advisers, the EURES Cross-Border Partnerships, the European Job Days, and the EURES Job Mobility Portal. The presented information in the main website is coming directly from Member States and involves a database of registered vacancies, a database of candidates, statistics on the Top 10 most preferred occupations in a country, information on cross-border employment and an overview of labour market information across all EU countries.

Vi@s is an online portal that focuses on the modernisation of Public Employment Services by increasing diversity, accessibility and quality of service delivery channels as well as by promoting more and better information on employment and training opportunities. Vi@s mainly supports the self-management of citizens’ careers. Additionally, it assists guidance counsellors as well as other staff working in the education, training and employment areas, to improve their face-to-face interventions especially with the more disadvantaged unemployed jobseekers and to reinforce or complement those face-to-face sessions. Unemployed, jobseekers, students and workers can access 4 different thematic pathways, according to their respective needs, that provide different types of information and activities, such as questionnaires, reflection exercises, self-assessment exercises, etc.

Bib-wiki is a provider-neutral and supra-institutional knowledge management platform for educational counsellors primarily working with adults in Austria. By means of online Wiki technology, contributions can be uploaded by registered counsellors and by a central editing team. Features for easy printing and forwarding of Wiki articles are provided. Beyond this, bib-wiki makes online content on occupational training and further education available to the general public; with a view to providing low-threshold information to those who tend to be difficult to reach by educational offerings. Online activities are augmented by onsite-networking events, the so called “bib-wiki cafés”.

LMI for All is a research and development project that has been underway since 2012 and, is still presently in its relatively early stages. The primary rationale for establishing the portal was to gather high quality, reliable and robust publicly funded data into one place that can be used to support individual career transitions using labour market information. The LMI for All database is an open access data service, which makes its LMI information freely available to any web developer. Crucially the web portal can be freely accessed; this means that developers are able to make use of the data’s potential to build applications which work for the specific needs of certain target groups (e.g. Y7 students, adults, HE or FE students).

The abbreviation KomposyT stands for "Comprehensive Counselling System". This is an online platform consisting of a publicly accessible area complemented by a password protected area, the latter being accessible to professional counsellors upon registration only. The publicly accessible area primarily focuses on the provision of information specifically tailored towards pupils with special educational needs, their parents and professionals working with them. Through the password protected area, specialist tools are made available for supporting case-based counseling. Also, tele-learning offerings are available to professionals. Finally, the platform supports research activities directed towards evidence based method development.

Kyvyt is a personal learning environment and an ePortfolio service, based on an open source software, that offers versatile tools for building and developing an online portfolio. It enables the gathering of all educational and professional info in one place during one’s lifetime, thus, allowing the continuous monitoring of personal evolution. The service constitutes a flexible and easy-to-use tool for co-operation among educational institutions and between educational institutions and working life. For students Kyvyt acts as a place where they showcase their skills and know-how. For teachers and study and career counsellors the tool allows them to monitor the progress of their students or clients. Kyvyt can also be applied in a workplace environment where supervisors can monitor and assess their employees’ and trainees’ skills and training process. Key to the implementation of the tool is the fact that people who have created an account in Kyvyt can continue to use the service, with no cost, even after their graduation or after they move to another workplace.

ePortfolio is an online repository of work experience, qualifications, skills and competencies intended to be maintained and updated throughout a person’s educational and/or professional life. The practice primarily targets school students, higher education students and unemployed adults, and secondarily adults who decide to continue their education or acquire vocational training, as well as women who need to return to work.  It consists of a web application, which can be used as a means of presenting oneself in great detail and in a formalised way, or for personal recording of one’s work experience, education, achievements, and skills. ePortfolio’s online resources are combined with on-site personalised professional guidance and counselling provided by the local vocational training services.

Syvonline is a dynamic information and resource platform that serves as a place for information dissemination and for knowledge sharing among professionals who work with guidance, mainly, in the education system. In the main, Syvonline aims to enable guidance practitioners to offer better services and stay up-to-date with research and other developments in their field as well as assist teachers to introduce guidance practices in the frame of their daily teaching routines. In turn, students are assisted to make more informed educational choices that will, eventually, facilitate their way to working life. As such, Syvonline also enhances the connection of education with labour market. The platform features a News Section, a Research Bank, a Guidance Method Bank, a forum that facilitates its users’ interaction and a tool that provides regional forecasts and LMI on career and educational paths.

The TET-tori ICT tool is linked to the Practical Professional Orientation periods that are part of the Finnish comprehensive school curriculum. TET-tori is a web-based resource center that aims to assist school counsellors, students and parents in the frame of the PPO periods so that it would be easier, more versatile and more efficient to find PPO positions. At the same time, the tool also helps companies and workplaces to easily create contacts with pupils and bring working life closer to school. The tool is structured according to geographic region, it serves as an information and communication channel and it also supports education guidance provision by supporting the implementation of the practical professional orientation. In addition, the TET-tori tool provides a broad range of information on students’ future education options as well as on professions along with the respective skills and training requirements, thus, leading to the integration of educational and career guidance information.

CareersPortal.ie has a work experience portal where employers can input work experience opportunities to connect with students and future employers.  They also work with employers who use the site to profile their job opportunities and use it to inform students/job seekers about the reality of the world of work.

Onderwijskiezer.be ('educational choice tool') is an online platform offering comprehensive and unbiased information about all educational programmes in Flanders offered by schools, university colleges and universities. Interest and orientation tests can be used as the basis for further investigation of the range of programmes available. Onderwijskiezer also has a question module and guarantees an expert answer to every question. Labour market information has been introduced because it was considered to be necessary to show the link between education and labour market.

BiWi is an austrian career guidance and information centre responsible for the province of Vienna. It provides young people with practical insights into existing professions and helps them make the right education and/or career choice. BiWi has an excellent cooperation with the Economic Chamber and offers also supportive activities for teachers, parents and local companies. Next to personalised meetings with clients, BiWi offers digital, updated and quality-assured labour market information through its media-database and web portal, like occupation films, application tips, statistics and apprentiship positions.

The Pathfinder service meaningfully blends in-person guidance with digital self-help tools in order to support youth and adults in Estonia to choose, plan and manage their education and career. The Pathfinder career planning portal provides convenient and around-the-clock access to information on opportunities in the education system and the labour market online. At the same time, practitioners at the Pathfinder Centres offer personalised and high-quality career guidance and information services in person. The complementary face-to-face and digital approaches employed in the framework of the Pathfinder considerably contribute towards improving the outcomes of the national guidance system.

The eGuidance service is the national digital guidance service of Denmark. It provides reliable, up-to-date information as well as guidance to facilitate the educational and occupational decisions of citizens across all ages. To this end, the practitioners of the eGuidance service utilise a broad array of digital guidance means, ranging from telephone sessions and e-mails over to online chat rooms, digital meetings and social media. The effective use of these digital means enables them to efficiently support citizens every day of the week, throughout the entire country.

Education Info mainly aims to empower students to make more informed decisions regarding their transition from one education level to another, while also having in mind the career prospects of their choices. The practice collects and provides updated, standardized and neutral information about the Swedish education system and aims to assist students to make more informed educational decisions regarding their transitions from one education level to another. It consists of several parts, according to the different education levels. Each part contains thorough information about the specific level of education, as well specific exercises, and tools that aim to support students’ choices. In addition, the practice provides a web-based career guidance tool and a personal folder that can be used to save users’ results and searches. Except for students, the website also aims at informing people who pursue a change in their career or seek to receive further training about the opportunities that they have. Education info can be used either independently or with the assistance of an educational guidance practitioner.

Professions in the picture is a website administrated by the Dutch organisation ‘The new Cooperation Organisation for Vocational Education, Training and the Labour Market (SBB)’. More than 480 professions are presented with descriptions, texts and videos, while there is information about training, internships and job opportunities for each occupation. Students are able to find out their interests and talents through tests, learn about possible education pathways and search in an interactive map for matching workplaces in every region of the Netherlands. Key to the above-mentioned is the extra supportive website for teachers.

Anelo.lu is one specific platform which serves as a comprehensive online resource for teenagers and young adults facing the transition from school education into occupational education, and the world of work more generally. This platform consists of several items and tools, depending on the needs of the user.  It contains a job information portal with an extensive database of different professions and provides information on different job profiles. Additionally, it contains an online platform in which youngsters can upload all the relevant documents that might be interesting for their job search. This platform can be used for developing and maintaining a personal online portfolio, including official documents and other documentations of personal strengths and capabilities.  It contains a similar tool in which youngsters can upload all relevant certificates that they have obtained. As such, an overview is created and youngsters can easily organise their certificates.

The Teens Gate portal is a Greek interactive guidance portal. It offers adolescents and young people with meaningful information and user-friendly career tools and games, enabling them to unveil their characteristics, values and interests, while also facilitating their transition to the labour market and building their career management skills. In result, the Teens Gate portal enhances the access of users to career guidance and supports the work of guidance practitioners working in counselling and guidance centres across Greece.

The National Careers Service was launched in April 2012 as a publicly funded, universal careers service for adults in England. The mission of the National Careers Service is to provide high quality tools to individuals, professionals and organisations which support them to make decisions on learning, training and work opportunities. A range of services are associated with the National Careers Service, most commonly:

• The digital service, including the website, online careers tools, Lifelong Learning Account, job profiles, webchat and social media
• Area based services: confidential and impartial advice, supported by qualified careers advisers in local centres (face-to-face and telephone) Includes local pages on the website. 
• Local labour market information and brokerage services for schools, employers, HE/FE institutions and other intermediary organisations.

Employment Service is a Swedish initiative, through which multiple ICT and LMI tools are offered by the PES. These ICT and LMI tools target jobseekers, employers and guidance practitioners and aim to facilitate the effectiveness and efficiency of the labour market in multiple ways.  Matching job seekers with job vacancies consitutes the key mission of the PES and is also the core target of these ICT and LMI tools. Jobseekers can explore a large pool of vacancies that employers from Sweden and EU countries create by posting their open vacancies, and employers can select the people with the skills that better address their needs among a large number of jobseeker profiles. On top of these, the users can receive valuable CMS. Important information is also offered on hundreds of occupations, the necessary respective qualifications as well as their future prospects. The use of online tools allows for significant time saving for the PES practitioners that enables a more effective execution of their guidance responsibilities.

An online platform and related services were incrementally developed since 2004 under the auspice of the Central Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family supervising a network of 48 District Offices. Today, this platform represents a one-stop-shop for LMI and online tools intended to support the statutory employment services in fulfilling their legally defined duties. At the same time, a publicly accessible self-service area was implemented which addresses different user groups, including adults searching for employment and career opportunities, pupils and young people in the transition phase from the educational system into the labour market and employers.

CareersPortal is a career guidance resource platform set to provide the most up to date career information to its users in an integrated and supportive manner. Key to the portal’s endeavour is the collection of information from various sources and its provision through a central source. The portal mainly targets those who want to plan their careers including: adult learners, job seekers, college graduates, school students, and early school leavers. In addition, the portal offers assistance and information to parents, guardians and guidance professionals. The portal features tailored information for the abovementioned target groups, an A-Z career section with job descriptions as well as career/interest assessment exercises.

BEN was initially implemented by the Federal Employment Agency (BA) in 2013 as a dedicated web site targeting skilled adults requiring support in carer development. For the first time, this web site has brought together information from different existing web sites maintained by BA in accordance to typical “life courses” experienced by the targeted user population. This approach enables skilled adults (e.g. persons wanting to re-enter the labour market, those who are interested changing their occupation or taking the next career step) to better exploited the information provided by different BA web sites for their own purposes. In 2016, the strictly user-centred approach towards presenting online content was further mainstreamed across the entire “online world” maintained by the BA. Since December 2016, BEN therefore is no longer visible to the user as self-standing online resource, albeit its functionalities are still available at the online portal maintained by the BA.

The Workprofiler enables the selection of job seekers towards face-to-face or computerised services by estimating the clients’ chances of finding work within a year. Additionally, the Workprofiler offers a quick diagnosis of the most important obstacles for their return to work and determines the type of services needed to enhance the probability to resume work in the near future. As such, it is a tool that targets unemployment and improves guidance/employment services.

As jobseekers are invited to participate to the Work Profiler when subscribing for unemployment benefits, awareness on targeted guidance activities enhances and guidance activities are more targeted.