CAREER GUIDANCE IN ALBANIA in support of wider employment, social, youth, and education and training policy goals

Career guidance refers to services and activities designed to assist individuals of any age and at any point in their lives to make education, training, and occupational choices and to manage their careers. Career guidance aims at helping individuals to navigate between available opportunities and to use their abilities optimally.

The factsheet “CAREER GUIDANCE IN ALBANIA in support of wider employment, social, youth, and education and training policy goals”, made possible by ETF, intended to identify the status quo of career guidance policy and practice, with a special focus on VET in Albania. It also aims to inform national policy and practice and future EU and ETF activities.

The task was to identify and gather information on the efforts made in introducing career guidance into education and training system (with or without the support of donors), concrete initiatives taken,  delivery models used, and how career guidance initiatives shortened the path from education to labor market.

In fact, on the institutional level still there is need to formalize the mechanisms of career guidance, however, there is a common and widely accepted vision by all key stakeholders regarding its importance as an indispensable service and contribution to young people's pathway towards productive employment and successful career. The recent legal changes clearly show the willingness, the political support and a changing culture towards career guidance.

The dominant career guidance mind-set at organizational level is to match skills need with skilled human resources by adjusting the skills supply to the demand of enterprises in the market. The National Agency for Employment and Skills (NAES) is one of the actors directly tasked to provide career guidance. The NAES does not consider career guidance and counselling from the perspective of economic policies. Instead, the approach is to provide young adults assistance and career orientation towards professions that suit the level or set of skills they have, or to guide towards reskilling them to match skills demand.

Projects are the main drivers in career guidance; contribute to institutional, organizational and individual capacity, aiming to enable the provision of career services in public VET institutions. Practitioners are supported through donor projects and training sessions. This contributes to increase the reputation of their work and strengthen an attitude of valuing investments in career guidance. There is a number of practitioners that have been supported, and capacities have already been created. So there is a relatively good basis to be considered.