Guidance for Employment: from the Political Vision to the Practice of Social and Occupational Insertion. A Literature Review.

Abstract

The paper deals with employment guidance, emphasizing its importance, as it is a facilitating element for a more effective career education and to improve the labor market. The aim is to understand at a theoretical and practical level how this professional field is currently developing, from an analytical and comparative point of view, using the PRISMA methodology. To achieve this, a thorough process of analysis of the more than 8000 initial articles located in impact journals included in Scopus and Web of Sciences has been conducted, based on the terms included in the UNESCO Thesaurus. After reviewing them according to the different inclusion and exclusion criteria decided upon by the authors, the research concluded with 15 of them. The results show how career guidance has become an increasingly important and necessary area in the professional and personal development of people who use it. However, the idiosyncrasies of the process, the users and the context make it difficult to establish fixed working criteria. Thus, guidance practitioners, as well as public policy makers, are of special interest for research and other actions, as they play a key role in the social and labor insertion of unemployed people.