Page 4 - euroguidance-insights-autumn-2020

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Career Guidance Services in the Times of COVID-19

Pandemic

The current unprecedented situation in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic poses a challenge
for providers of career guidance services. The need to develop and expand the portfolio of online
counselling services to guarantee the continuity of work is rising. In Slovakia, there are multiple
examples of good practice.
and Personal Development Month provided participants
with the opportunity to take part in webinars, video
streams, consultations and online discussions to get
valuable information and advice from the team of career
guidance counsellors, recruiters and the representatives
of international corporations.

Career Compass

Michaela Valicová is a career guidance counsellor, who
has been providing virtual guidance services for over
three years. The COVID-19 pandemic did not find her
unprepared. Via Career Compass, which is her
innovative organisation, she is offering experiential
Mareena
distance career counselling to a diverse target group.
People from various “corners” of Slovakia as well as
Mareena is a Slovak NGO providing career Slovaks living abroad can join her consultations. The
guidance and support to people in need of
outcomes of the session, that every client receives, are
international protection and foreigners living in highly individualised and graphically elaborated.
Slovakia. Mareena’s target group is especially
vulnerable, since a lot of the clients have lost Online career guidance and counselling services were
their jobs during the pandemic. When the crisis slowly becoming more common even before the start of
began, the first step was to map the situation the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic seems to be
and clients’ needs. Mareena employed trained supporting the existing trend.
volunteers to accompany foreigners and
people in need of international protection
throughout the whole process of job searching.
Moreover, Mareena started hosting webinars Stanislava Kováčová
on the topics related to job hunting in the
Euroguidance Slovakia
Slovak labour market.
Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica

One of the missions of the Career Centre at
the Matej Bel University is to offer activities
contributing to students’ career progress. The
Career Centre reacted promptly to the
lockdown by transferring all activities into the
virtual world. The main virtual event - Career