By Mette Werner Rasmussen and Kalle Vihtari 

This article is taken from the NVL (the Nordic Network for Adult Learning). The NVL promotes collaboration on lifelong learning throughout the Nordic Region, and develops knowledge for decision-makers and practitioners. The network is a programme under the Nordic Council of Ministers. Find more content about lifelong learning in the Nordic countries at NVL.org.

In this article, we will focus on career guidance for adults, and discuss whether there are special features and circumstances in relation to this guidance. To expand upon this, we present a number of general examples that we believe are characteristic of guidance for adults. In this connection, we talk about adults as one category, even though adults obviously include many different groupings with widely varying social and economic backgrounds and conditions.

The main focus of, and most of the funding for guidance is usually directed at young people and their educational choices, in terms of guidance programmes, research and surveys. It's based on the old-fashioned notion that young people make one career choice for their entire working life. If adults are to be able to cope with all the changes and career shifts that most agree will only increase in the future, there is a need to prioritise, develop and provide access to professional guidance for adults. There is also a lot to be learned from adult career guidance that can be applied to guidance for young people.

Basis of the article

The article is based, first and foremost, on the KIAL project and a PhD on educational guidance (see fact boxes at the bottom of the article), but also partly on discussions and activities in the Nordic Network for Guidance. What the two works have in common is lifelong guidance and learning, but beyond that, they focus on different areas. The PhD focuses primarily on educational guidance for adults in one school as a subject area, while the KIAL has a broader focus on career guidance for adults. Furthermore, the PhD relates to guidance in a Finnish context and is written in Finnish (with a summary in English and Swedish), while the KIAL has a broader (Nordic) base and is written in Danish.

Although it has not been a particular aim, and although there are different starting points and perspectives to our works, we have clearly identified a number of specific features of adult career guidance and circumstances of adults’ living conditions. We will outline a number of examples of these characteristics and circumstances below.

Career understanding

An essential prerequisite for providing career guidance is having knowledge of career understanding and career development. It is necessary to do away with the traditional concept of career, whereby career development is understood as a gradual upward movement achieved in competition with others, more pay, greater responsibility, etc. Instead, a broad and more democratic concept of career must be applied, which implies that everyone has a career, that all work has value, and that career development can move in all directions. A career is not just about work, but should be seen as an individual's journey through life, learning and work. This understanding therefore defines a broader field than just jobs and education, and by extension, it is not possible to understand a person's career path without also looking at the importance of the living conditions/context in which the person has to make choices. Context matters in another way too. Choices are not made entirely on an individual basis, but in the social and economic context in which the person lives, which provides and creates a framework for the choice.

Career awareness is important for everyone, but for adults who are changing careers, it's especially important because adults often have a career already and need to rethink it. If the basis of career understanding is hierarchical, the career perspective will be narrow and only include the opportunities that lie on the surface of the existing career. Understanding that a career can evolve in all directions opens up career choices and opportunities.

Adults and life roles

By extension, the multiple life roles adults usually have is another essential characteristic of guidance for adults. These are life roles that can also help to define what it means to be an adult.  The threshold for adulthood can no longer be defined by a specific age. Looking at people's living conditions as a basis for determining the adult category is a much better starting point. Life is no longer predictable, but now involves an individualised course without a specific life and phase development.  For adults, this manifests itself in the many transitions, life roles and life contexts that adults are part of, and which impact and influence their career path and career choices. For example, the ‘work-life’ or, perhaps more accurately, ‘life-work’ balance is a significant factor - a balance that can change over time during the working life, depending on the importance of other spheres of life. The relationship between work and life can also manifest itself in the desire for total coherence between all parts of life and roles - one life.

The labour market, acceleration and career change 

Against the background of a more individualised life course, the labour market is becoming increasingly characterised by rapid change - a phenomenon most agree will only increase in the future.  For adults, this means more transitions in the form of career changes and alternating between work and education in accordance with the lifelong learning paradigm. The acceleration society increasingly puts adults in a position, and under external pressure, to make career changes, and not just small changes, but comprehensive and radical career shifts. In addition to the external pressure from changes in the labour market, acceleration can also manifest itself as an inner, individual pressure to constantly evolve and innovate. At the same time, there is a growing resistance to job dissatisfaction (e.g. the ‘Quitting’, ‘Quiet quitting’ and ‘The Great Resignation’ movements, whereby people quit their jobs without having a new one), which also challenges the labour market. Many people feel burned stuck in their jobs - what's new is that more people are asking questions, speaking out against an unsustainable working life, and seeking better conditions, greater meaning, self-determination and flexibility.

Some career changes are easy to go through and achieve, while others are more profound and can be the result of life-changing experiences and a fundamental process of change, with new values, interests and life goals. For those going through a more profound career change, it's important to establish whether this is due to an external or internal cause. An external cause could result in resistance and fear of change, which needs special attention in the guidance, and requires specific methods and approaches, while the motivation is completely different if the change is self-induced.

In connection with career change, we will also highlight the pressures of choice and time that an adult’s role of breadwinner and family status can put them under, which can affect how much choice there actually is. It is conceivable that in adult career choices, there may be a tendency to give different weightings to the realistic choice and the ‘career dream’, in favour of the former.  To put it bluntly, a career change is more likely based on coincidences rather than real choice.

Adult skills, learning and experiences 

Competencies and their structure is another characteristic of adults, and there is often too much focus on what an individual lacks in terms of skills, rather than what they can actually do. Adults typically have many skills, and it’s important to get an overview of these skills for future career paths. Very few people have this overview, and a deeper and open form of skills assessment is therefore an essential component of and prerequisite for career guidance. Such a skills assessment should include skills from all spheres of life and, in addition to making skills visible and usable, it can contribute to recognition and motivation to dare to see and discover more career opportunities.

Related to this is the issue of adult learning and experiences, which can be more rooted and ingrained. Adults can have both good and bad experiences. It may be important to look more carefully at the bad experiences, which often block career prospects, in order to de-individualise the causes of the negative learning experience, which may be due to structural factors. Experience can also come from a narrow field and, as a result, career prospects can be very limited. For this reason, career exploration is a very important part of career guidance.

Finances and skills development 

What are also characteristic of adults’ situation are their finances and the limitations it might pose on adults' formal skills development. Finances in the field of education for the public are often allocated to young people, or in the case of adults, often to the less educated. This focus is not up-to-date in relation to the desire and need for lifelong learning.

The complexity of career guidance for adults

Generally speaking, we postulate that the situation of adults in a career guidance context is far more complex and requires a special approach and attention. There are often many more parameters that need to come together for adults to find a suitable career and/or make a career choice. There can be many changes throughout a person’s working life, many transitions and decisions to be made. Perhaps there are also more obstacles? In general, it is difficult to stand in a place with skills that you may not have an overview of, a labour market that can also be difficult to grasp, and an education system that is not always transparent. Where can opportunities be found in a combination of existing skills, new skills, the labour market, multiple life roles, economics, etc.? All of this is something a potential choice needs to fit in with. The labour market is ‘closer’ for adults, and a particular challenge is how much of a role the various forecasts for the labour market outlook should play in the choice. Another challenge is that forecasts are often very uncertain. This makes adult life a complex area, and a career choice that has to balance all these roles and contexts can be a very complicated situation in terms of guidance.

Challenges in career guidance for adults 

In the political and societal debate that is currently ongoing to a large extent around the need for change, new jobs, career changes, etc., the main focus is on the needs of the labour market, but how individuals should be able to adapt and find new paths in their working life is hardly touched upon. Lifelong career guidance has a major role to play in this and in supporting people to find sustainable and meaningful careers with changing career scenarios and changing living conditions throughout their working life.

The career guidance needed for career changes in working life is a guidance that is placed at the intersection of skills, education and the labour market. Career guidance that has a broad overview of adults' opportunities in both the world of work and the educational system, and can look from side to side and combine these different worlds into a whole. The problem is that guidance is often broken down into systems and sectors, either in the education system or in the labour market and working life sector, not as a whole, which is exactly what is needed for lifelong learning and the movement back and forth between working life and education. Another key issue is that within professional career guidance, most of the guidance offered is based in the educational sector. Another possible challenge is that the guidance that is provided in each sector or system is, in addition to being sectoral, also narrowly confined to that sector because it is linked to, for example, a specific educational institution or a specific trade union. For transitioning and changing careers, however, there is a need for breadth in the guidance.

Career counsellors' skills and knowledge

Not only is it important for career counsellors to have a formal training as career counsellor (or real competence recognition) that includes guidance theory and methodology, an essential ingredient in the work of a career counsellor providing guidance for adults is knowledge in the areas of education, the working life, the labour market, competences, finances during education, etc. It is often not knowledge that is gained through training and education, but knowledge that must be acquired through practical work as a career counsellor. This applies to both basic knowledge and continuous updating - something that, unfortunately, is often not given enough time in the individual career counsellor's work.

Frameworks and coordination

As long as lifelong guidance does not exist as a unified guidance system, the coordination of guidance between the different systems and sectors can play a crucial role in improving the coherence and unity of the guidance. A coordinated guidance system means, among other things, that career counsellor exchange and gain new knowledge about and from each other's systems, and work on career guidance across the education sector, working life area and social sector. The NVL Guidance Network provided a description of the coordination in the Nordic countries in 2017, and will complete an updated status of this coordination in 2023.

Development potentials and perspectives 

There is a need to develop new approaches and methods that suit adults’ different living conditions, where previous knowledge and experiences can be explored in new situations and contexts. In addition to education and the working life/employment, career guidance for adults must also be able to include other life factors that influence career choices and development. Career guidance must also develop approaches around societal aspects such as sustainability, inequality and social justice. Career guidance must also work with and develop ways of understanding what is at stake in the working life, such as the concept of burned stuck. In line with lifelong learning, an important focus is ‘learning to learn’ and strengthening adults' ability to cope with changing and challenging situations in the future. Adults need time and space to evaluate their previous, perhaps negative, learning experiences in light of new experiences. Furthermore, adults should have the opportunity to explore their own motivation in relation to different work opportunities. For example, adults, like young people, must have the opportunity for job training, to explore potential career opportunities in the real world.

Who are we?

Mette Werner Rasmussen has many years of experience in career guidance for adults, both as a practising career counsellor and in coordinating and developing guidance and guidance programmes within and across systems. Most recently, Mette has, in collaboration with Finland and Iceland, completed the Nordplus project ‘Career guidance and (real) competencies in the working life’ (KIAL), the main focus of which is the broader clarification of career guidance and the part of career development that relates to career change.

Kalle Vihtari has worked as a guidance counsellor in adult education. Kalle completed a PhD in 2021 on the topic ‘The role of the general upper secondary school for adults in promoting study and career paths - a narrative study on graduates' career stories’. Kalle currently works at the Haaga-Helia School for Vocational Education as a principal lecturer, training- guidance and career counsellor..

Nordic Network for Guidance in NVL

We are both connected to the adult guidance network in the Nordic Network for Adult Learning (NVL). In this network, we have had some discussions about whether there is ‘something special’ about guidance related to adults instead of young people, and we have been working on creating a definition of career guidance for adults. This definition has been presented and discussed at several scientific conferences, both in a Nordic context (Nornet, 2021) and internationally (IAEVG, 2021) for the purpose of obtaining feedback.  Many have been surprised to have to deal with whether there is a need for a specific approach to and content of guidance for adults. The NVL definition is in motion and open for discussion, and will be elaborated on at a later date.