Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa Toolkit

Careers advice, which is also called careers counselling or careers guidance, advises young people on job search and possible careers, and may provide connections to employers through job fairs or career days.

💼Careers advice interventions

Careers advise may be offered through a permanent careers office which may be hosted by local government or in a school or a university, a mobile career service, an online portal, or through one-off events such as workshops for careers advice, or career days or job fairs at which youth meet potential employees.

Careers advice may also be offered less formally as part of a mentoring relationship of apprentices, interns or other trainees in the workplace.

Careers advice is often offered as part of a broader package of support, though there may also be one-off activities such as workshop or job fair.

Interventions may also support infrastructure and equipment for career centres, training of staff, and providing support material such as manual.

🎯How is careers advice expected to increase employment?

Career guidance may affect youth employment through the following channels

• Providing information about the job opportunities available, the qualifications required for different careers paths, and where to obtain those qualifications.
• Advising children and young people on suitable career paths given their interests, aptitude and likely qualifications.
• Providing connections to potential education and training opportunities and with employers.

🖋Design choices

Design choices concern the location of the careers service, and associated question of the target group. Consideration needs to be given to appropriate training for counsellors, and ensuring they are kept up to date of labour market demand, and how to institutionalize the careers service.

📈Effect of careers advice on employment

Evidence from three randomized controlled trials shows a small, insignificant effect on skills, employment and earnings.

A study of job fairs in Ethiopia found that young people had unrealistic expectations about their job prospects, but revised these expectations after meeting employers.

❗Implementation issues

Issues which arise in the design and implementation of careers advice interventions are:

• Outreach especially to those farthest from the labour market, which includes locating events such as job fairs in the capital which excludes most eligible youth;
• The need to ensure that advice reflects the realities of the labour market and that youth have realistic expectations;
• Provide careers information to people the young people may turn to for advice, such as vocational trainers;
• Challenges in institutionalizing careers advice in universities.

🦾Strength of evidence

The evidence of impact in this technical report is based on four impact evaluations of three interventions. Evidence on implementation is from seven process evaluations of youth employment programmes. The impact evaluations are rated low to high confidence in study findings, and the process evaluations low and medium confidence. Overall, we have low confidence in the findings on account of the small number of studies.

🔎Implications for research

There is a need for additional rigorous impact evaluations. Encouragement and factorial designs should be considered.

📜Evidence based findings for policy and practice

If careers guidance is to be supported then policy makers need to support research for cost-effective means of providing such guidance. Rigorous evaluations of different design approaches are needed to better inform policy and practice.

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