Digital Tools for Career Guidance of Ukrainians abroad
Author: Hanna Voronina
Based on the latest data, approximately 4.2 million Ukrainians currently hold temporary protection status in Europe, with Germany being the primary host country (Eurostat, September 2024). As a result, currently one of the significant challenges is the integration of working-aged Ukrainians into the European labor market. This complex situation is aggravated by several factors, including a lack of local market information, skills and knowledge gaps, language barriers, difficulties in validating qualifications, but above all impact of physical and mental problems, constant psychological stress, social isolation, as well as external and internal uncertainties and instabilities. Obviously, adult women and young people, who make up the majority of externally displaced Ukrainians, require high-quality career guidance and re/education or re/training counseling to eliminate difficulties they face in making career choice and to facilitate their integration during these challenging times.
In the recent years the field of career guidance in Ukraine has undergone significant transformations, marked by the launching of new projects and research aimed at reforming this sector. The main objective has been to leverage the latest international expertise and create modern platforms for effective career orientation and counseling for both young people and adults. By integrating advanced computer technologies, the relevant experts and IT specialists have applied AI tools to profoundly enhance career education and counseling. Consequently, career guidance has been revolutionized into a number of personalized, data-driven, effective and accessible digital tools, such as:
Personalised Career Counsellors - AI driven platforms that analyse individual profiles, including interests and educational background to provide tailored career guidance. These Platforms can suggest suitable career paths. Educational programmes and job opportunities;
Labour Market Analysis AI tools that are used to monitor and analyse labor market trends. It helps in identifying emerging job sectors and skills in demand, allowing career counsellors to provide state-of-art advice;
AI powered chatbots and virtual assistants (Virtual Career Advisors) that are available to provide instant career guidance. These tools can answer common questions, help to write resume / covering letter or to prepare for job interview, etc.
Taking into account the challenges of the present extreme times, new digital career guidance platforms, introduced in the recent years in Ukraine have become effective mechanisms not only for internal users but, most importantly, for those who were forced to flee to other countries and now have to adapt to the changed learning or working conditions and meet the requirements of new labor markets.
Exploration of the latest digital tools and assessment of the new functions and options they offer should be started with Diia. Education. This unique edutainment platform provides users with free access to digital career guidance, reskilling and upskilling opportunities through education videos on traditional and innovative jobs, guides and job simulators, profession trees and self-assessment tests, career-focused webinars, podcasts and events for teachers, trainers, students and parents. A distinctive feature of the platform is a possibility to take part in a job simulator to experience different professions and roles through real life situations in relevant working conditions. The registered users get access to the individually generated set of videos and job simulators according to the results of the career tests and questioners. In case of successfully performed tasks the user receives a certificate that proves a sufficient level of initial knowledge and skills in a certain profession and could be taken into account by the possible future employer. Moreover, this user-friendly and easy-to-navigate platform is presented both in Ukrainian and English to cover the larger audience and facilitate adaptation to the international job market.
Expert Platform ‘Career Hub Ukraine’ brings together young people, employers, governmental agencies and educational institutions to provide the better chances for youth employment. The Platform promotes the development of career counseling presenting the first officially certified by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine training course for those who would like to master this profession. Among the other numerous options provided by Career Hub are career services for Ukrainians abroad, mentoring and retraining programmes for unemployed youth from the leading Ukrainian companies, inclusive career counselling in IT sector, career maps in top industries, interactive toolkits for career and youth centres, the latest information and useful resources on the development of hard and soft skills, etc.
The National career guidance project ‘Choose the profession of your dreams’ has been implemented by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine since 2021 to meet the need for a free career guidance in all Ukrainian secondary schools. It presents multimedia career lessons, self-assessment tests, company online visits, etc. The project diagnostic system is based on AI and determined a list of students’ abilities individually matching them with relevant professions for each registered user. Moreover, the project presents a training course for career counsellors that consists of a number of modules explaining the basic of counseling functions, methods and techniques. It also gives some analytics on the perspectives of the labour market development. Some modules are devoted to career coaching tools and modern instruments, fundamentals of career planning, etc. Using this platform teenagers can learn about a huge number of traditional and innovative jobs, discover new tendencies in the world of work and better understand strong points of their personalities.
One more effective tool is a digital platform ‘Happy Monday’, that provides users with AI-based job search according to individually chosen location, format and type of job with an option of regular update in more than 25 sectors. The platform is daily attended not only by job seekers who can learn about more than 800 leading national and international employers from Verified Company Profiles, but also by companies trying to find perfect candidates for their vacancies. Happy Monday is also actively engaged as a mentoring supporter in the latest initiatives and state programmes, such as Reskill UA, providing free opportunities for professional development and retraining of Ukrainians with the possibility of the further employment in the national or international companies, integrating into the local labor market in a wide variety of fields from Logistics and Marketing, Energy and Construction to Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence.
The number of effective digital career services are also provided by the State Employment Centres including e-platform for career guidance with online tests, smartphone application, AI job-searching tools, videos on professions, career planning and career management tools, that facilitate and speed up the users’ support and counseling based on the current needs of local, regional and national labour market information.
Talking about the latest developments and digital tools that facilitate the process of career guidance and counselling bringing it up to the absolutely new level it is important not to forget about the specialists who work in this sector. Fast-changing conditions and constantly new challenges in the discussed demand a quick and relevant respond from the experts. In response to the urgent need to unite efforts and coordinate the activities of relevant specialists, a new independent organisation “The Assossiation of Career Counsellors of Ukraine” was founded in May 2023 to optimise the career guidance system, raise the professional standards and improve the quality of its services. According to the founders, this association aims to become an environment for professional growth of career counsellors, their training, mentoring and experience exchange. In the nearest future it is also planned to develop occupational standards for career counsellors and actively promote this profession.
International cooperation of key players in this sector is also one of the promising solutions to overcome the emerging challenges. Launching job matching platforms for Ukrainians in the EU, active participation in European and global career events leading to memberships in relevant international organisations, conducting longitudinal Studies on Ukrainian Refugees and developing comparison of European Qualifications Framework with Ukrainian National Qualifications Framework facilitate the integration of Ukrainians into European labour market.
Useful Resources:
Publications:
European Training Foundation. (2022). National Career Development Support System Review Report. European Training Foundation, Turin. Available athttps://www.etf.europa.eu/en/document-attachments/career-development-support-system-review-ukraine
Websites:
Career Hub Ukraine https://careerhub.in.ua/
Institute of Professional Qualifications http://ipq.org.ua/
Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine https://mon.gov.ua
National Project ‘Choose the profession of your dreams’ https://hryoutest.in.ua
National Qualification Agency https://nqa.gov.ua/
Platform ‘DIIA. Education’ https://osvita.diia.gov.ua
Platform ‘Dreaming and Acting’ https://mriemotadiemorazom.org
Platform ‘Happy Monday’ https://happymonday.ua
State Employment Service of Ukraine https://www.dcz.gov.ua/
About the author:
Hanna Voronina holds a PhD in Education, and is Senior Researcher of the Institute of Problems on Education of the National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine
About this blog:
This blog is based on a workshop held by the author at the Austrian Euroguidance Conference 2024
it is also published on www.euroguidance.eu
