Youth Career Guidance Management

Abstract

The article explains the necessity of managing the process of the youth career guidance. The problem under study is as follows: nowadays the system of vocational education causes employment disproportions, part of which can be eliminated with the help of a proper career guidance based on an expert diagnostics of a personality. Career guidance should take into consideration two main factors – a vocational aptitude of a personality and job openings available in the labour market. To solve this problem and eliminate the contradiction between society demands for personnel and career plans of young people the authors propose the project of a social partnership, in the course of which a method of group advice seminars for school leavers will be tested. Group advice seminars are supposed to be conducted considering job availability in the regional labour market, the findings of the social survey of the youth’s career plans and are aimed at diagnosing of a personality and providing recommendations on career guidance. To avoid the situation when young people are focused on a profession which will be in a low demand, typological career guidance and support should be provided. Social survey findings have shown that many young people being unaware of their sociological type choose the wrong career path. Thus, an expert socio-diagnostics could diminish social tension if it were used to find out people’s vocational aptitudes.

Keywords: Career guidancelabour marketsocio-analysis

Introduction

A great variety of jobs makes it more difficult for young people to choose a profession. Career choice depends on two conditions: 1) the demand of society for various professions, specialties and positions; 2) young people’s life plans connected with their abilities and needs.

As the demand for employees with a secondary-level vocational education is higher than for employees with a higher education, the risk of getting a profession of a lower level is rather high for university graduates. The tendency of getting a job of a lower level becomes stronger in response to the economic crisis, when the employees who are not in demand at commercial enterprises find a job in big government-owned corporations or state-funded organizations.

On the one hand, today we can observe many opportunities for free choice connected with the differentiation of education content and increase in the amount of young people getting vocational education. On the other hand, the modern society faces new social restrictions. For example, nowadays it is much harder for young people who live in a village to get a top-quality higher education than for urban teenagers belonging to low social layers or coming from undereducated families. Thus, the rural youth represent a mass low resource group (Cherednichenko, 2014). The use of sociological survey findings for developing of social policy measures will help to eliminate educational and professional inequalities among young people and will contribute to motivating young people to choose an industrial worker or agricultural occupation.

Problem Statement

The problem of the study lies in contradiction between irregularity and independence of separate social subsystems development, which include the system of education, labour market, demographics and demands of society and a personality for optimizing a career choice. In that light, it is especially important to get information about young people who do not have enough money to get education but obtain a high capacity for mastering industrial worker, engineer and agricultural professions.

Socio-professional and cultural identification of a personality in the modern society acquire a multiple, indefinite, ambiguous, changeable character. Concurrently, a personality in the modern society is rather independent from social systems and culture. A person aims to make his or her own choice of an occupation. Being a part of a dynamic social and cultural environment, a personality always looks for his or her self (Jung, 1996). That is why self-identification of a personality is of a contradictive and usually dramatic critical character.

When young people choose their educational and professional paths, the choice of a future profession becomes one of the main decisions closely connected with gaining a social status. The problem is to provide a balance of conditions in the labour market, personal capacity of young people and personal aspirations which quite usually do not coincide with their vocational aptitude.

Russian and foreign experts believe that most of expenses in the socio-economic activity of the country are associated with the lack of scientifically-based personnel system. One of the reasons for that was the tradition of a partocratic approach to recruitment and personnel appointments in the national economy, scientific and cultural fields. Another reasons for the lack of a tradition of recruitment is disrespect for a human’s personality. People always used to be ‘labour forces’. ‘labour supplies’, ‘work force’ for the state. In modern Russia the traditions of a person-focused approach in the field of recruitment are gradually developing. The person-oriented methodology in the field of recruitment is focused on a human’s personality, its abilities and uniqueness. One of the forms of such a person-focused approach is a typological career guidance.

Nowadays scholars have developed theoretical concepts of a ‘personality-focused’ pedagogy based on the idea that all people are different and unique and that the system of education should be adapted to this diversity. Another important pedagogical idea implies that it is not a mental capacity that should be highlighted but a qualitative specific nature of person’s abilities. In other words, the qualitative methodology should dominate the quantitative-level approach to a human’s personality. The main idea is not to ‘sort’ students but to establish educational conditions in compliance with their abilities. However, implementation of the ideas of education personalization is hardly possible as establishing of conditions ‘in compliance with a qualitative specific nature of student’s abilities’ cannot be applied in an ordinary school as the assessment of students’ progress is mostly based on the level of their training, competence and mental capacity. The focus on unequal children’s abilities and dividing them into gifted and talentless students causes social selection. Thus, the lack of a qualitative typological approach prevents implementing the idea of education personalization.

Research Questions

Management mechanism is common for all types of people’s activities including career choice and career guidance. The management algorithm consists of the following stages: foreseeing, forecasting, designing, programming, planning, social technologies and social experiment. Designing implies many various decisions and is used while developing social plans, regions and territories development plans and is aimed at changing social institutes. The main types of social designing are designing of new manufactures and new cities and towns. When new types of manufactures are designed it is necessary to keep in mind that part of professions may disappear, some professions may change their essence and others may become just one of the stages of a socio-professional mobility of people, especially young ones. The main participants of designing the process of young people’s employment are prospective employers, the system of higher and secondary vocational education, students. Each of these participants has their own typological specific nature (Abercrombie, Hill, & Turner, 2000; Antoshkin, Lukyanova et al., 2017; Dobrenkov, 2003; Ovcahrov, 2007).

When people choose their future profession the mechanism of social identification comes into play, which means that a personality associates itself with social systems. Another mechanism is a mechanism of cultural identification, which implies that a personality associates itself with culture and a value-regulatory system of society (Bukalov, Karpenko, & Chykirysova, 2005). When people try to find their vocational aptitude, another process is dominating. It is known as self-identification, which implies that a personality associates itself with its uniqueness and individuality. Without self-identification, a personality becomes impersonal. However, the process of self-identification may fail, if a personality is not aware of its aptitudes and abilities. Such misidentification may be connected with a person’s low or too high self-esteem, when a personality associates itself with an inadequate self-image. For example, a person may estimate his or her professional aptitudes and abilities inadequately and further, when he or she will have to comply with certain professional requirements, he or she may diminish the level of aspiration and change their self-identification.

The efficiency of social management is defined by its ability to provide a complex development of a social object. The problem of career guidance and employment can be solved only if a personality takes an active part in the process of career choice (Keirsey & Bates, 1984). In other words, the process of management should be complemented with the process of self-management. All in all, designing of the processes of career guidance and prospective employment of students should be balanced and be in compliance with the labour market demands, with typological peculiarities of teenagers and their vocational aptitudes.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the present study is to prove that the management of the process of young people’s career guidance is possible with the help of the latest advances in social studies and an applied technology of an expert personality diagnostics.

The practice-based purpose of the study is to establish the idea of an innovative project of social partnership in the field of career choice and the youth employment (Gulenko, 2015). The social technology of a personality-focused career guidance should be used to adjust differences between the labour market demands, the system of education and career plans of teenagers and young people. It is possible if a complex approach is used.

According to this approach job openings in the regional labour market, the findings of social surveys studying career plans of young people, socio-diagnostics of a personality and career guidance recommendations including the ones for industrial worker and agricultural occupations and occupations based on a secondary vocational education should be taken into consideration.

Research Methods

Among the methods of collecting and analyzing empiric information, the sociological research as a method of social diagnostics aimed at revealing essential, invariable indications and trends in behavior of social systems and a personality should be emphasized. The task of social diagnostics is to characterize the object considering parameters of integrated, personal, social and cultural subsystems. The core part of a social diagnostics according to the authors of the article is a typological analysis (the social diagnostics of a type as an object of social management).The typical representation through study of information and communication processes in a community is understood as the minimum information about an object. Social diagnostics by means of typical representations helps to applythe method of social simulation (the study of social objects with the help of analyzing their main (typical) characteristics (Abercrombie, Hill, & Turner, 2000; Antoshkin, Lukyanova, Faizullin, Abdrakhmanova, & Bilalova, 2017; Bukalov, 2006; Ovcahrov, 2007). The main methods of empiric sociological research are as follows: the analysis of statistic data on job openings in the labour market including industrial worker, agricultural and engineer occupations; opinion poll, i.e. mass survey and a standard expert interview (the method of an expert assessment), the method of focus-groups. Another stage is to conduct a job analysis and work out a job description which includes the list of requirements for a certain occupation or position. It is a precise information on abilities, knowledge, professional skills, character traits that a prospective employee should possess. When experts determine a social type of a person, they compare it with professional requirements. A career adviser provides a consultee with a number of professions (including industrial worker and agricultural occupations), the requirements of which this person meets.

Findings

In our study we are interested in the information on the youth’s career plans. This article demonstrates the findings of a social survey conducted among high school students in Ufa in 2015 and of a social survey among the rural school students of the Republic of Bashkortostan. The survey was conducted by the social technologies center named ‘Socion’ and the sociological laboratory of the Bashkir State Pedagogical University (BSPU) in 2016-2018. The students of Ufa were asked the question, ‘What professional rank do you consider to be sufficient for your career?’ The findings are represented in the diagram below (in a percentage form).

See Full Size >

The results of interviewing have shown that more than a half of prospective school leavers of Ufa are interested in senior management positions (Figure 01 ). One third of the students under the survey are interested not in middle-level but in higher-level management positions. Here we can observe the phenomenon which is known in sociology as the phenomenon of inverted pyramids, which was found out by V.N. Shubkin (Cherednichenko & Shubkin, 1985, p. 39). The lower pyramid reflects the demand of society for jobs and positions. At the bottom of the pyramid one can find mass and most popular positions. Rare and prestigious jobs and positions can be found at the top of the pyramid. The upper pyramid demonstrates career plans of those young people who are mostly attracted to prestigious statuses. Thus, we can see the discordance of these two pyramids, which in real life is the contradiction between the needs and possibilities of society and needs and abilities of the younger generation.

These findings demonstrate idealistic visions of young people as well as drawbacks of career guidance. For example, psychologists usually prefer to hold leadership trainings, though society mostly needs reliable performers. The economic growth on the 2000-s proved the lack of high-qualified performers in the economy, which is still preserved. Moreover, teachers have not explained to teenagers that not all of them possess necessary abilities and characteristics of a manager and that ordinary employees can also become rather successful in their career. The main requirement of today’s labour market is a professional competence, which closely connected with education. In other words, vocational status is obtainable but not prescribed. So, when teachers train all students to become leaders, they make a serious pedagogical mistake, which may lead to a big disappointment in the future.

More than 50% of Ufa students pay attention to the rating of a university when they choose where they are going to continue their education. Meanwhile, there are half as much students who rely on their vocational aptitude and abilities. Consequently, career guidance is not sufficient enough in most schools.

The education system takes the intermediate position between the demands of society for certain jobs and vocational aptitudes of young people. Nowadays we can observe the shift of the education system towards the satisfaction of consumers’ personal aspirations. However, personal aspirations of a teenager are deeply influenced by social systems and cultural traditions and are in conflict with interior personal qualities. The social paradox here is that real aptitudes, abilities and needs of a personality often comply with the structure of job openings in the labour market.

State educational institutions often focus on knowledge, while skills development is the task of an employer. When the situation is contradictive and it is not obvious whether to train some person for the given job or not, the expert diagnostics of a personality can help a lot. Its use will lead to the national product price reduction by means of payment cost-cutting. It also can be reached by means of increasing the capabilities of the efficient use of redundant but hardly used resources (such as young people, women, ethnic minorities, migrants, etc.)

According to the findings of the social survey conducted at BSPU (2019) career guidance at universities is as chaotic as it is at secondary schools. Every second student is not well aware of the kind of profession he or she acquires at the university.

According to our study the most popular with the students’ field of professional activity is the sphere of modern information business. This is the sphere where the science, new technologies, production and service are combined. The students’ answers in percentage are given below (Figure 02 ).

See Full Size >

We should also underline that information business is not always of an innovative character. The aptitude for innovations was demonstrated only by 7% of Ufa high school students, which is rather reasonable. If we sum up the answers to several questions, we will get the following distribution of school students between life and labour spheres:

See Full Size >

According to the survey findings of Cherednichenko and Shubkin, (1985), many school leavers believe that a successful career, prestigious status and decent income level are inconsistent with a worker profession. Decent life standard for the youth is mainly associated with a high level of education. Young people from various social groups aim at getting higher education. It is known that today many people do not practice their professions and get further education or are retrained. The labour market experiences the excess supply of experts in humanities (Figure 03 ).

The system of vocational education causes imbalance in human resources, most part of which can be eliminated with the help of proper career guidance based on the expert diagnostics. Another way to overcome this imbalance is the focus on a worker profession.

Nowadays people consider a worker’s profession (and an industrial worker profession in particular) to be unprosperous and depreciated. Today many young people are focused on obtaining a higher education, high social position and working in an office. Being a worker in the industrial sphere is not considered to be prestigious. All these factors diminish the value of a worker’s profession for young people. The findings of a sociological survey conducted by the Russian sociologists have shown that the career path of a worker who finished a vocational school meets the demands of the industrial sphere for most of professions and qualifications. Vocational schools train specialists capable of vocational advancement and rather satisfied with their jobs. Satisfaction with the labour testifies that the profession chosen complies with abilities and needs of a personality. To be more precise, rather big number of people with higher education, who are not satisfied with their present occupation demonstrates that people make many mistakes while making their career choice (Cherednichenko, 2014).

Many people believe that the graduates of pedagogical educational institutions have no wish to work at a rural school and are not ready to work in poor social infrastructure conditions of a village (Sheregi, Arefev, & Tsarkov, 2016). However, the findings of the social surveys conducted among the students of pedagogical educational organizations and rural school leavers rebut this view. More than one third of school leavers are planning to live in a village. More than 40% of the respondents think that young specialists have good career prospects there; more than 30% state that after they finish school, they are going to move to town to get education. Among the main reasons for moving to town the respondents name hard living and working conditions (28%), then the lack of job opportunities and an opportunity to get further education (23%), the next reason is low salary (22%) and the lack of free time (22%). Then come the cultural conditions (16%) and low level of medicine and low life standard (10%) (Asadullin et al., 2018). Thus, school leavers and students demonstrate their willingness to work at a rural school but it is hard for them to put up with the lack of ‘cultural oases’, job opportunities as well as living conditions and salary.

Conclusion

Homeroom teachers of the best schools observe and study their students by means of psychological tests. Then they plan their study guidance based on the findings that they obtain. This way they determine what jobs are suitable for their students and how many students belong to each group. These groups are based on the following correlation: a person – technologies; a person – a semiotic system; a person – imagery; a person – a person; a person – nature. However, first of all, test method is not reliable enough, as it is based on a student’s subjective self-assessment and their subjective self-image. Secondly, vocational aptitudes of a student are studied as separate from the core of a teenager’s personality or their socio type. Thirdly, schools and other general education institutions usually lack experts on a personality diagnostics. Fourthly, career guidance at schools is usually too impersonal and is not focused on any specific job openings available in the regional or local labour market. In other words, a teenager does not get any specific recommendations for career choice considering job openings available in the labour market and a person’s natural typological capacities. This situation does not motivate young people to choose an industrial worker or agricultural occupation (Antoshkin, 2008).

The younger generation pays attention to both factors, such as a status value of a profession (to assert themselves in society) and attractiveness of a job (to find fulfillment), despite the fact that they do not always coincide and there are some contradictions between them. It is impossible to bring into direct correlation the youth’s career plans and the demands of society and the state. When people try to manipulate the youth’s career guidance (for example, when they create a false image of non-prestigious occupations or use the appeals of the Soviet period urging the whole class to work at a factory), it may lead to the process of levelling out of young people’s abilities. Nowadays a profession is considered to be non-prestigious when the labour is low-skilled, low-waged and an employee has limited career advancement opportunities. To manage the contradictions mentioned above the authors propose to develop the project of a social partnership and to apply the method of group advice seminars for school leavers and orphanage leavers seeking employment. Group advice seminars are supposed to be conducted considering job availability in the regional labour market, the findings of the social survey of the youth’s career plans and are aimed at diagnosing of a personality and providing recommendations on career guidance motivating young people to get a secondary vocational education and choose an industrial worker or agricultural occupation.

Career guidance should take into consideration two main factors – a vocational aptitude of a personality and job openings in the labour market. According to the findings of the sociological analysis conducted by the ‘Socion’ center in the agricultural regions of the Republic of Bashkortostan from 2016 to 2019, career guidance should be mainly focused on agricultural occupations. It is necessary that experts on a teenager’s personality diagnostics should be trained and employed at schools. Such experts should motivate school students to choose an industrial worker or agricultural occupations. Consequently, streaming of students based on their vocational aptitudes should be introduced into the system of school education. It should be the main focus of socio-analysis and an expert socio-diagnostics in the near future.

The issue of a vocational aptitude diagnostics became even more topical when the Federal Unified State Exam (USE) Act was adopted. The Unified State Exam in Russia demonstrates the achievements of school students by the time they leave school. However, combining these achievements together with entrance exams would be misleading. There are three main types of diagnostics: assessment of educational outcomes, the diagnostics of abilities and aptitudes and socio-diagnostics (the process of determining a personality socio-type). The experts in this field know that different tasks should not be combined within one test. Socio-diagnostics helps to determine in born potential and vocational aptitude of a person. School leavers’ potential does not directly depend on the knowledge they have. This contradiction is inherent in the USE and it is redoubled by the fact that the method of socio-diagnostics is not used at schools and universities.

It is advisable to apply these three types of diagnostics separately. All students’ progress in various subjects should be tested during the final year at school. This work should be done by the boards (departments) of education. According to the results of the tests developed by them, the work of a school will be assessed and secondary school leaving certificates will be given to students. The diagnostics of a vocational aptitude should be conducted by the experts on socionics and socionic career guidance. This work should be performed by independent (private) experts and organizations. Independent experts and companies also major in the third type of diagnostics, i.e. in testing abilities and aptitudes. The results of such tests belong to a school leaver and a student can be the subject to diagnostics any number of times.

References

1. Abercrombie, N., Hill, S., & Turner, B. S. (2000). The Dictionary of Sociology. Moscow, Publishing house ‘Ekonomika’. The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology (4thed.). M: Ekonomika.
2. Antoshkin, V. N. (2008). Pedagogicheskaya sotsionika. [Educational Socionics]. - Novosibirsk, Sibirskoeuniversitetskoeizdatelstvo.
3. Antoshkin, V. N., Lukyanova, R. A., Faizullin, I. F., Abdrakhmanova, F. R., & Bilalova, L. M. (2017). Sociological Research as a Method of Social Diagnostics. Eurasian Journal of Analytical Chemistry- 12(7b), 1-9.
4. Asadullin, R. M., Antoshkin, V. N., Kudinov, I. V., Iliushina, N. S., Karunas, E. V., Yashin, E. A., & Nikogosyan, A. A. (2018). Sel'skaya shkola Bashkortostana: problemy razvitiya. [Rural school of Bashkortostan: problems of development]. Ufa: BGPU.
5. Bukalov, A. V. (2006). Universal'nyy kharakter sotsionicheskogo znaniya. [The universal nature of socionic knowledge]. Menedzhmentikadry: psihologiyaupravleniya, socionikaisociologiya, 7, 38-40.
6. Bukalov, A. V., Karpenko, O. B., & Chykirysova, G. V. (2005). Effective Management and Staff Consultation with use of Socionics Technologies. Proc. conf. of the British and East European Psychology Group “Psychology in the new Europe: methodology and funding”. Krakow. 28.
7. Bukalov, A.V., Karpenko, O. B., & Chyruzysova, G. V. (2009). Forecasting psychological, business and informational compatibility in space flights, in aviation and aerospace technologies. 9th Ukrainian Conference on Space Research, Yevpatoria, 2009. Abstracts. Kyiv, 104.
8. Cherednichenko, G. A. (2014). Obrazovatel'nyye i professional'nyye trayektorii rossiyskoy molodezhi (na materialakh sotsiologicheskikh issledovaniy). [Educational and professional trajectories of Russian youth (based on sociological research)]. — M.: CSP i M.
9. Cherednichenko, G. A., & Shubkin, V. N. (1985). Molodozh' vstupayet v zhizn'. [Youth comes into life]. Moscow: INFRA-M.
10. Dobrenkov, V. I. (2003). Ideal'nyy tip i ideal'naya model'. [Perfect type and perfect model]. Moscow: INFRA-M.
11. Gulenko, V. V. (2015). Gumanitarnaya sotsionika. [Humanitarian Socionics]. - Moscow: Chyornayabelka.
12. Jung, K. G. (1996). Psikhologicheskiye tipy. [Psychological types]. Moscow: AST.
13. Keirsey, D., & Bates, M. (1984) Please understand me. – Inosology Books Ltd.
14. Ovcahrov, A. A. (2007). Effektivnost' organizats. [The effectiveness of the organization]. Menedzhment i kadry: psihologiyaupravleniya, socionikaisociologiya, 4, 5-6.
15. Sheregi, F. E., Arefev, A. L., & Tsarkov, P. E. (2016). Usloviya truda pedagogov: khronometricheskiy i sotsiologicheskiy analiz. [Working conditions for teachers: chronometric and sociological analysis]. Moscow: Centr sociologicheskikh issledovanij.