Sustainable Career Guidance During the Pandemic: Building Pathways into a ‘New Normal’

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced regular patters of career guidance. Globally everything has stopped: projects were postponed, and workplaces were closed but this situation has pushed career counselors to search for new opportunities about how career guidance could be carried out. The pandemic has intensified existing challenges in society, adding complexity for the processes of a transition of educational systems towards digitalization and have intensified the need for remote career guidance. Young people become particularly vulnerable to the digital divide. Career development support has been at risk with the emergence of an unpredictable future. However, career guidance during the pandemic can serve as a tool for understanding the situation in depth and searching for new opportunities that exist, by helping individuals to overcome anxiety. While practicing physical distancing, career counselors have kept active professional networks in assisting their clients with their needs. The operation of career guidance has been transferred mainly to the online format and has required the counselors to develop new skills and competencies. The methodology employed in this study included interviews with individual career counselors about the main challenges and solutions discovered during the lockdown. Career counselors were questioned also about how they shaped a more sustainable and flexible online career guidance system. They revealed details about their struggles and hopes encountered in the situation of crises. The authors point to critical areas for improvement that career counselor can provide to their clients during the lockdown.

Development of a Web-based Intelligent Career Guidance System for Pre-Tertiary Science Students in Nigeria

The traditional approach to career guidance is a manual method that is ineffective and inefficient. The electronic approach provides an effective and efficient career guidance. This research therefore developed a web-based intelligent career guidance system that assists pre-tertiary science students in Nigeria to independently choose a career path at anytime and anywhere with the use of computer system or mobile/smart phones as applicants seek admission into various fields of study in Nigerian Higher Institutions (Universities or Polytechnics). The intelligent system uses student-driven parameters such as favourite science subjects combination, career interest inventory analysis result, and intelligent quotient test result for career recommendation. The web-based intelligent system was designed and implemented with principle of a rule-based expert system using forward chaining algorithm, the client-side/interface pages (front-end) were designed using “Bootstrap 3” front-end framework that contains HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. For the back-end, XAMPP was used. The system was implemented and evaluated using 200 pre-tertiary science students; they took the career choice tests and provided their feedback for the evaluation of the system performance. The feedback shows that the recommended career by the system is 95% accurate and relevant, 70% satisfactory, and 80% adequacy of information on career guidance by the system.