Development of an Information and Reference Application for Vocational

Guidance of Students

Aigerim Sarzhanova

1

, Rui Pedro Lopes

2,3 a

, Aigul Tungatarova

1,4 b

and Gauchar Borankulova

Abstract:

The problem of choosing a specialty and direction when entering higher education, is now more and more

urgent. Every year, according to statistics in Kazakhstan, more than 60% of university graduates do not

work in their speciality of choice. This problem is more often associated with the fact that students choose a

speciality and apply for a grant, and in the process of learning they understand that they do not want to work

as a engineer for example and tries to find another work. Some of that problem could have been prevented if

professional orientation in secondary education had been conducted in schools of Kazakhstan. Career guidance

is a number of activities that need to be carried out systematically in primary and high schools. There is a lot of

information available in the Internet, but being a schoolboy, a student of grade 9-10, it is very difficult to find

reliable information. Consciously make an admission plan and go step by step to the goal. In my application

Career guidance is an important aspect of human de-

velopment, largely influencing the path of profes-

sional development and success, because the choice

of the future profession shapes the individual’s life.

Choosing a profession is an important and respon-

sible stage in the life of a young person. The defini-

tion of the sphere of professional activity means the

choice of future preferences in relation to the circle of

communication, lifestyle, work environment. Career

guidance has the objective of working with students

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9170-5078

b

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7600-9608

c

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5701-8074

by the sphere of professional activity: this is a pro-

cess of professional self-determination, which is not

necessarily accompanied by career guidance work or-

ganized in a secondary school (Belyakova and Za-

kharova, 2020)

nal allocation of labor resources, the improvement of

the institutional environment of the economy, which

acts as an additional incentive for its development.

The goal and main objective of career counselling

is to provide people (usually students) with the skills

and knowledge they need to make important decisions

throughout your life. Career counselling goals and

objectives can shape an individual’s future, change his

outlook on life and his ability to succeed. Career de-

velopment is a lifelong process that actually started

with birth. From that day, our likes and dislikes, our

abilities, background, and circumstances will all in-

fluence the type of career we choose. Career coun-

selling is a process with the potential to help under-

standing the person we are, helping making the right

choices, not just for the professional career for also

for life. Career counselling not only helps shaping

the personality but it will help being more organized

formation from higher education institutions, profes-

sional orders and other sources. This tool constitutes

an entry point for students, providing information and

answers to their questions and doubts.

The paper is structured in five sections, starting

with this introduction. Section 2 describes the tools

and research on the area. Section 3 describes a web-

based tool for vocational guiding. The paper contin-

ues in section 4, with some practical scenarios and

finishes in section 5 with some conclusions.

affects one’s future (Nesterenko et al., 2021).

According to a report on the state of education in

Italy, presented last year by the Italian Ministry of Ed-

ucation, University and Research, the percentage of

students who enrolls at University right after the con-

clusion of upper secondary education is about 49%

and it has registered a slight decrease during the last

5 years (Barana et al., 2016). Moreover, the academic

path often proves to be harder than expected: only

55% of students pass more than half of the first-year

These are, many times, related to bad choices,

due to insufficient information about relevant special-

ties and essential professions and programs. Pursu-

ing popular programs or professions can often lead

to over saturation of the labor market, then lawyers,

then financiers, leaving unfilled vacancies in other es-

sential professions (e.g. engineers or teachers). Em-

ployers blame the lack of work experience on many

graduates, and students continue to gain “experience”

in Employment Centers and at the Labor Exchange.

Graduates of technical universities enjoy an ad-

vantage in employment – they are much more in de-

mand in the domestic labor market by 75%, while hu-

were born in the United States due to a combination

of various socio-economic reasons: the growth of in-

dustry, migration of people from rural areas to cities,

and other changes accompanying rapid industrializa-

tion. The problem of searching for a job, the difficulty

of employers selecting the most “suitable” people for

vacant positions was more acute than ever, which led

to an increased need for more organized efforts to help

people find work.

The first stage of career guidance development

was employment services (1890-1919) (CareerGuid-

ance history, 2021). The founding father of career

guidance is Frank Parsons: Parsons’ career counsel-

ing model was based on simple logic and common

sense and relied on the skills of observation and in-

professional choice, and therefore it is possible to put

forward the hypothesis “The system of professional

orientation in Russia is not built properly, career de-

cisions for most applicants are often due to the in-

fluence of family, friends, the level of s/p and other

indirect reasons, and as a result, training in a profes-

sion that is not directly correlated with their desires,

opportunities and interests”. This is due to personal,

objective and subjective factors (Aggarwal and Shri-

vastava, 2021).

the rest come from medium and small towns.

As a result of the survey conducted on the iden-

tification of problems of professional orientation of

young people, it is possible to identify a number

of problems obtained directly empirically (Pulyaeva,

2020).

There is a big problem of insufficient awareness of

young people about the world of professions: about

the content of work, about working conditions, about

that young people get information mainly from the

Internet and ask for advice from parents and relatives,

which, of course, is not the merit of career guidance,

but a common pattern concerning family relations and

the development of information technology. Career

guidance activities should use these mechanisms, but

not be replaced by them.

Despite the fact that career guidance does not pro-

vide relevant information in full, young people do not

show a desire to possess this information when choos-

ing a profession, which is indicated by their inaction.

It is worth noting that applicants highly appreciate

the status of an educational institution, the prestige of

studying at this university, the attitude of employers

to the diploma of this institution, so, one of the prob-

fessional consultant.

43.3% of those who passed any methods of diag-

nostics and applied to specialized centers noted that

the results obtained during the study did not coincide

with their real choice, and this is a clear indicator that

people engaged in career guidance work are not com-

petent enough, do not have a specialized education,

but work on the basis of a banal passing of the sim-

plest test, which is available to every user on the In-

ternet, and voicing the automatically obtained result.

more than half of the students are not sure that they

will work in their specialty.

Summing up the results of the survey as a whole,

it should be noted that according above (section 2) the

hypothesis given earlier are absolutely confirmed by

empirical data. The creation of a concept of psycho-

logical and pedagogical support for self-determined

people, expressed with the real support of experts, sci-

entists, specialist consultants, families, medical insti-

increase the degree of involvement of relevant social

partners-representatives of professions to create an in-

teresting and diverse environment (circles working to-

gether with professionals in their field, industrial ex-

cursions, etc.), in the process of teaching and raising

children, starting from kindergarten and ending with

people who already have an education, working in the

profession, but experiencing the painful consequences

of a wrong choice (Pulyaeva, 2020).

A distinctive feature of the career guidance sys-

tem in Japan is that it is almost entirely concentrated

in high school, and not in specialized centers (Ukke,

2021). Career guidance here is deeply integrated into

the educational process and forms the core of the cur-

ricula for secondary schools. In Japan, career guid-

this ability of schoolchildren (Marsh, 2019). This test

was called the “F-test” (Fukuyama-test) to assess the

ability to methodically choose a profession. Since

1950, it has been repeatedly used in many schools in

Japan, which made it possible to take measures to im-

prove career guidance for this stage of education.

In 1972, the test was published. From this the au-

thor pays special attention to the cross-cultural com-

parison of test results. Thus, a significant role was

played by comparing the data of Japanese and Amer-

makes it related to “methodological theory of the

choice of professions” by the founder of the Ameri-

can career guidance F. Parsons (Inaba et al., 1992).

Also, external factors may influence the student

in making decisions for future profession. There are

three main pervasive factors investigated in this study

in influencing the career decisions of youths in both

individualistic and collectivist societies. In collec-

tivist societies, parental intervention is understood as

the understanding of parental influence and diversity

in bicultural and migrant youths’ career prospects and

their ability to use the resources available in their

new environments to attain meaningful future career

goals. Additional research, particularly qualitative, is

required to explore the level of family involvement in

youths’ career choices among migrant families in dif-

ferent cultural settings (Abbas et al., 2021).

However, in practice, most of students make their

decisions with the help of their parents, choosing tra-

ditional professions or following a family dynasty

profession, where their grandfather is a doctor, the fa-

ther also a doctor and so, the son must also choose to

be a doctor. This may hinder or wrongly influence the

career choice (Akosah-Twumasi et al., 2018).

like “man-man” is reduced to the interaction be-

tween people. If this interaction does not improve,

then the work will not improve either. Qualities

necessary for working with people include calm,

Based on these, an example of a possible test

could point to a “Man-Man” type profession. This

includes professions focusing in communication with

people and their mutual influence, such as doctor,

teacher, manager, teacher, psychologist, salesman,

coach. An important quality in these professions

advice. After analysing all the abilities, grades and

the virtual counselor will show the individual plan to

student with several possible universities, with their

requirements and steps that should student make to

achieve the goal.

Figure 3: Entity–relationship model.

The information is stored in a MySql database,

structured in nine entities (Figure 3).

The web application is being developed in PHP

and technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JS, en-

as the selection of information about universities, ac-

cess to the profile, as well as to the analysis of their

test results (Figure 4).

4 PRACTICAL SCENARIOS

The web application is currently in development and

we expect to have a prototype for testing in Kaza-

khstan. After eventual improvements and corrections,

it will be extended with information from other coun-

tries.

Nowadays there is no such similar application for

cate with online counselor if while the process some

question occur, also it will analyse all students re-

quests and in the end will give more suitable option

and plan for student.

The benefits of the application is that the all infor-

mation needed will be in one place. Students and their

parents find information, answers all the questions us-

ing only this application. Also the main benefit is that

it will be free and all graduates can use it regardless

rolling in areas and institutions that are not suitable

for them and their capabilities.

This paper described the importance and design

of an online career counseling application, for voca-

tional guidance of students. The main goal of this

application is to provide a service for career and uni-

versity selection advice for students, through central-

ized information and virtual vocational assistant for

students. So they can without searching the informa-

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work has been supported by FCT – Fundac¸

para a Ci

UIDB/05757/2020.

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