Labour Value Cards, Occupation Cards and a Picture Questionnaire on Interests to Help with Career Choices

Used as support tools for career guidance discussions, the picture decks “Occupations” and “Labour Value” and the Picture Questionnaire on Interests help complement career guidance discussions that start out in a traditional manner and are often hard to understand or boring for students/young people with poor verbal skills, special educational needs or learning disorders with colourful, visualised career choice tools that aids text comprehension with photos and can be used in a creative way, thereby facilitating the process of individual or small-group counselling.

Long-term objectives of the project:

• assist young people in finding jobs in the labour market;
• develop skills and attitude that improve employability;
• promote independent living.

Short-term objectives include

• expand basic knowledge of the labour market;
• facilitate access to the open labour market with personalised information;
• teach job-seeking techniques;
• provide practical experience in addition to competence development and disadvantage management;
• support preparation for successful employment with self-realisation opportunities.

Based on trade groups and labour values, the drawn cards provide an opportunity to initiate discussion with individual students or small groups. Possible practices include:

• Collect tools: tools associated with working in a particular trade can be collected.
• List activities: based on the cards, activities can be associated with the pictured trades.
• Collect trades: trades/occupations belonging to a particular card (trade group) can be collected.
• Maintain interest, identify labour values: focusing on the details in each picture, the interests, labour value preferences and emotions of young people can be identified and work activities that seem interesting, or boring, to them can be pinpointed.

Aided with photos, the statements in the picture “questionnaire” facilitate understanding, making it easier for students to picture whether they like to do certain activities or are interested in each work activity.

In conclusion, the cards can be used as the basis for role-playing in small groups, help prepare sample exercises, analyse texts and initiate brainstorming, and work well in both individual career guidance and a small-group setting.

This good practice was awarded the Hungarian Euroguidance Career Guidance Special Award for Comprehensive Individual Support Tool