First Global Careers Month kicks off on 8 November

The first Global Careers Month is being launched in November. Organized jointly by the Inter-Agency Career Guidance Working Group, the initiative aims to shine a spotlight on the importance of career guidance in helping individuals access decent work, careers, and the support they need to plan and develop their careers. The event runs from 8 November to 13 December.

Career guidance is more important than ever in today’s world. Labour markets disrupted by changing work organization, digitalization, the greening of economies and the COVID-19 pandemic are facing new and unique challenges for career-related decision-making by both young people and adults. Growing evidence shows that effective guidance can help individuals better navigate labour markets, but too few people have access to it.

Against this backdrop, the Inter-Agency Career Guidance Working Group (IAG CGWG), composed of Cedefop, the European Commission, European Training Foundation, the ILO, OECD, UNESCO and the World Bank are organizing a Global Careers Month. During this period, the international agencies, will promote a series of global and regional events, in partnership with national and regional associations operating around career development for both young people and adults.

Career guidance is becoming increasingly important to enable efforts to support access to decent work and livelihoods. Its role in ensuring labour market relevant skilling and re-skilling efforts as well as promoting professional mobility, will be a key factor during the process of economic recovery. Moreover, career guidance is increasingly important to the development of effective lifelong learning policies and a hallmark of quality in establishing incentives to training.

Objectives of the Global Careers Month:

Raise awareness about the role and importance of effective career guidance to enable access to decent work, careers, and support growth efforts during economic recovery;
Identify shared challenges to the development of career guidance systems as well local specificities linked to local contexts;
Showcase high quality, as well as innovative solutions to promote career development support in diverse contexts and for learners at different stages in their educational and career pathways; and,
Disseminate research undertaken by the collaborating agencies on the design and delivery of effective career guidance.

Opening ceremony: 8 November

The Global Careers Month will officially kick off with an Opening Ceremony on Tuesday, 8 November, from 12:00 to 13:30 CET. It will provide an overview of activities to be developed over the month and offer insights on the state of career development across the globe. In addition, social partners, practitioners, and researchers will provide their perspectives regarding the current challenges and priorities for the near future.

Closing ceremony: 13 December

The Closing Ceremony draws to an end the Global Careers Month, with the participation of regional careers associations, social partners and researchers. During this event we will:

Reflect on the take-aways of the events organised by regional partners;
Discuss priorities for action in the near future at global and regional level;
Provide visibility to innovative solutions in career guidance from all the regions; and,
Present follow-up actions to consolidate the global community of practice in career guidance.

For more information about the schedule of events and activities planned for Global Careers Month, visit: IAG Career Guidance webpage hosted on the Skills and Lifelong Learning Knowledge Sharing Platform.