Thank you to Büşra Kulakoğlu, who is a communications volunteer for work group 2, for writing this blog post and a recording of the webinar can be found at the end of the post.

On 14 April 2026, WG2 of COCAG held its third webinar featuring a panel session on career guidance policy. Moderated by Dr. Tibor B. Borbély-Pecze and Dr. Petra Elftorp, the session brought together four speakers whose presentations approached the topic from distinct yet closely connected angles. Taken together, the panel moved across time in a productive way from the present tensions in career, to the past conditions that form the self, to children’s imagined futures, and finally to the question of how career guidance policy might be transformed through justice and sustainability. What emerged was a shared challenge to narrow understandings of career guidance as a purely individual matter. Instead, the discussion showed that career guidance is deeply social, political, and moral.

The Present: Tensions Between Individual Choice and Collective Need





Jouke Post opened the panel by asking what constitutes a good career. Rather than treating career choice as a straightforward matter of personal preference, his presentation emphasized that careers unfold at the intersection of individual aspirations and collective conditions. A career is shaped not only by what one wants, but also by labour-market demands, changing social needs, crisis conditions, and the pressures of economic transformation. This creates a persistent tension between the individual and the collective.

Post described this challenge through the idea of responsiveness. In his framing, a responsive career path is one that can adequately and in a timely way respond to signals, changes, and needs in a particular field of work. This is especially relevant in periods marked by disruption, including the aftermath of the pandemic, technological change, and sectoral shortages. Some forms of work become newly valued, while others are destabilized.

📌 Past, Present, and Future in Career Guidance Policy: Reflections from thePanel (Cuttack)
🏢 Critical Perspectives on Career and Career Guidance (COCAG)
📍 Cuttack