STUDENTS CAREER COUNSELLING – AN IMPORTANT STEP IN SOCIO-PROFESSIONAL INTEGRATION. CASE STUDY: ROMANIA

Staiculescu Camelia
Associate professor, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, ROMANIA, camelia.staiculescu@dppd.ase.ro

Abstract

The transition from school to professional life is often a challenge for youngsters. Being themselves in the transition from teen age to adulthood, most of the students have to make decisions regarding their future career in which their skills and knowledge could be valued. For youngsters at teen age this change they have to face is a crucial one. They have to choose among a job and university studies, to make decision in order to build a professional experience and to benefit of existing opportunities. The influenced theories in the field of career development and counselling tried to explain how to balance the jobs’ requirements with the peoples’ personalities, interests, values and contexts. The main idea of the present paper is that career counselling services for students represent a need and this is not the idea of the author only but the conclusion of research in the field of career counselling. In addition, the paper represents an analysis of the counselling services provided to university students in Romania emphasizing the specific of legal framework existing in Romania and the best practices in universities. Career counselling is compulsory in Romanian universities according with legal regulation renewed in 2011. Although almost all major universities in Romania have provided counselling services for students even before 2011, many of higher education institution started to build counselling centers for students after 2011. This is why the final part of the paper contains some recommendations regarding the counselling process based on practices in more experienced universities from other countries considered applicable in Romania by the author.

Keywords: transition, theories in the field of career development, counselling services